You're right. Part of the reason that I hate getting up is that I don't get enough sleep, and part of the reason that I don't get enough sleep is not that I'm sucked into eve, or into tv, or whatever at night. It's just cause i'm trying to let my brain settle from a day of work and an evening of taking care of a 2 year old and fixing dinner.
1.) That's the back of the patch panels. That's the building infrastructure, which should be done once, labeled well (each jack on the front of the patch panel corresponding to a plug in the wall of whatever office), tested and verified.
It's all well and good to leave service loops on the fronts, but that is part of the building infrastructure. That's something that you wire once, you test every connection, you double and triple check it, and then you never touch it again.
I'm 25, I work 40 hours a week. I'm married and have a 2 year old.
My day consists of: drag self out of bed, do best to wake up (not a morning person - I don't mind my job, I just mind waking up). Go to work. Leave work, pick kid up from daycare. Come home, put on Sesame Street eps from the Tivo, make dinner (I love to cook). Wife comes home around 6-7pm, we eat dinner. Kid gets a bath at around 7:45ish, goes to bed at 8:30.
After 8:30, I have until about 11:30 or 12:00 until I crawl in bed, so I have about 3 hours of time that's mine. Sometimes, I choose to spend it with the wife, sometimes I watch some TV, sometimes I do a chore or two (change cat litter, take out trash, whatever). But a lot of that time, I spend playing eve-online. And a lot of times, my wife spends a good bit of it playing WoW. I guess we do it to escape for a while. I really don't see anything wrong with it, though. Every once in a while, I'll sit down with Eve for a long play session, but that's usually on weekends. The wife doesn't raid, she likes essentially all the early quests you do by yourself and with a small party, so usually she creates a character, and in a couple of months levels it up to lvl 30 or 40, then gets bored and creates a new character, from a new class/race.
It is possible to play an MMO and not have it suck 18 hours of your day. As long as it doesn't take over your life, it can be therapeutic. Take care of your real-world duties, and after that, there's nothing wrong with a little escapism.
1 351326 37.75% DA 5.5 2 204586 21.98% urlgrabber/2.9.6 3 98507 10.59% urlgrabber/2.9.8 4 52375 5.63% libwww-perl/5.65 5 33563 3.61% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.00; Windows 98) 6 30354 3.26% Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.co 7 19440 2.09% urlgrabber/2.9.7 8 16261 1.75% Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.6) G 9 10651 1.14% DA 7.0 10 9632 1.04% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1;.NET 11 7263 0.78% Wget/1.10.2 (Red Hat modified) 12 6241 0.67% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1) 13 4495 0.48% Mozilla/4.05 [en] (Win98; I)) 14 3793 0.41% Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.5) Gecko/200 15 3755 0.40% Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7) G
What does it show?
Nothing!
Of user agents that I actually know what they are, it would appear that Windows 98 is actually the most popular OS that visits my site - at 3.6% of total hits! I would assume urlgrabber is abot, but what the hell is DA 5.5?
See, I was under the pretty clear impression that, even if you got an IP allocation less than a/24 (a webhosting company I used to work for had a couple of really small allocations from our ISP to cover our router interfaces), upstream providers never announced a route smaller than a/24 into the global route tables. They would aggregate smaller routes under their larger allocation and route the traffic internally to you.
But, I guess my question is - would a RBHL use the listed route, or the allocated block?
Because... the smallest allocation most routers will recognize when aggregating routes is a/24? It's a little more complicated than you think, Tex.
You can't own *one* IP address, man. For starters, no one is going to sell you one IP address. For second, you would have to justify why you want to add an ASN to the global BGP route tables for every person who wants their own IP. For third, even if you did manage to get a "/32 allocation", you couldn't do anything with it. You need 4 IP addresses to connect to the BGP-routed tubes; a network, broadcast, local, and remote IP. I guess you could run a webserver on your router, but whatever. THEN even after all that, most BGP routers will not forward any global route that is less than a/24 anyway.
The only way you can avoid getting lumped in with all the other spammers on your netblock is to own your own 256 IP address block and run your own router. You'll need something with an HDLC interface (you should be able to get an old bay networks router off ebay if you want it), and you'll need to get your own ASN. Then you'll need to buy enterprise level bandwidth, like a T1. You might be able to find someone to sell you a fractional T1 for $300-$400 a month.
I'm gearing up for an almighty crisis in a couple of months vis-a-vis laptop / tablet PC support in Linux.
The CS department where I work has decided to do away with our walk-in-and-sit-down computer labs, in favor of open "collaberation spaces" where kids can bring their laptops and work in a more flexible environment. Whatever, I think there are going to be some problems when 40 people jump on a wireless network in a 300 sq. ft. classroom, but.... the big problem is:
This comes at the same time as the College of Engineering (of which our department is a part) has decided that all incoming freshmen need to have a tablet PC.
Yeah. Good thing no one in the CS department runs linux.
The poster of the above comment is a friend of mine, aside from being a pre-space shuttle space program junkie and also a big fan of apollo 12, and he explains the above post as this (over IM):
HIM: man, im a fucking dork. ME: how's that? HIM: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=196049 &cid=16065585 HIM: gotta read the story HIM: problem is, no one at/. is gonna get it. HIM: basically, like 90 seconds into the apollo 12 flight it was hit by lightning and the entire computer stopped working HIM: the fix was a switch labled SCE, and to flip it to aux to basically power cycle the computer. ME: heh ME: you know your shit. HIM: Apollo 12 is the shit. HIM: its my specialty. HIM: haha HIM: im *that* guy on/. that has a absurd amount of knowedge about one small area of things that are discussed. HIM: and its useless information.
I figured those of us who haven't spent weeks in the Air and Space museum, or read the audio transcripts from all available NASA flights, would want an explanation.
Did you try the "new printer" - Connected to this computer locally, no plug and play - make a new port - TCP/IP - DNS name or IP of printer - then install the printer?
I've found windows printers tend to pretty much always work better if they assume they're directly connected, and the fact that you can lie and tell windows a tcp/ip connection constitutes the same thing as an rs232 plug to be very convienient. When you install a network printer it tends to bitch a lot and want to check and make sure the printer's there and whatever.
In fact, half of the printers I've installed, if they're network printers and also Laser printers, are in a situation so that windows thinks they're 1.) locally connected, and 2.) HP laserjet series II
It's worth pointing out to those that don't play Eve-online: CCP (the developers) don't coddle you. If it isn't directly subverting game mechanics, it goes. Anything you want to do to make money in Eve-Online is ok - whether it's officially supported by the game or not - as long as it's not directly exploiting a programming error. Basically, preying on the stupidity of others is a good way to make money.
It's hypercapitalism (unless you're in evolution, I guess).
Let me go ahead and advertise for eve: If you're sick of playing whack-a-mole with your guildmate's health bars in WoW, or you're looking to step out of the kiddie pool, Eve is a pretty damn good game. You level up 24/7 whether you're playing or not, and the only motivation to play compulsively (a. la. everyone I know who plays WoW) is to make money - and once you get some skills and time under your character's belt, money isn't that hard to come by. This focuses the game on the wide universe of eve - production, research, industry, PvE, PvP (pretty much universally accepted as the best PvP MMO out there), or other ideas.
Also, player controlled territory. Check out this: http://www.eve-files.com/media/corp/CRII/Latest.jp g All the territory in the middle is "empire" space, relatively safe (every solar system is graded on safety, from 0.0 to 1.0), and home to many NPC's. Many eve players can (and do) make their living and have a lot of fun staying in empire space. Outside of that, though, is Player controlled territory. That territory is held by alliances, many of which have over 1000 pilots. In 0.0 space (alliance space), might makes right, and you hold your territory by force, or not at all. There are no NPC's other than NPC pirates which exist to provide income - stations are player owned, people must build or transport their own stuff, and if you venture out there, you're on your own.
It's a whole new world. Check it out - email me at fark@dunnclan.net for a 14 day trial.
From what I've heard (and read, for example in this month's maximum PC piece on home theater PC's), most TV's more than about 8 months old that have an HDMI port won't support the proper encryption.
Your mileage may vary. You know how rumors and wild speculation get at a new product launch.
(Because the HDTVs sold to date mostly have component inputs, and no HDMI input)
I'll go one further. Unless your HDMI input and your TV and your cable and your output support HDCP encryption, you get nothing, and must down-convert to Analog.
This month's maximumPC which I just received today has a review of various PVR software suites for a media center PC.
Windows Media Center gets low marks for being very content-provider specific, as opposed to user-focused. For example, they've added in (presumably at the content providers' request) the functionality to have some programs *cough*thesopranos*cough* automatically deleted after 2 weeks. Why? Well it doesn't serve the user. And then, there's DRM, watermarked WMV, nonstandard formats, etc.
On the other hand, the other software suites get high marks for being completely user focused and standars adhering.
Microsoft already has the users. They don't need to focus on that - they need to focus on decisions made around confrence tables. I.E. the sound needs to be manditory, so that everyone knows you're running WindowsVista(tm). Or, whatever. Screw the users, they'll buy it anyway.
You'd think this kind of thinking causes companies to go out of business, but... here we are.
You "choose" to use GPL'd code or not the same way you "Choose" to have safe sex or not. Choosing to have safe sex doesn't make AIDS not a virus.
In the same way, choosing not to use GPL'd code in your project doesn't change the fact that if you *do* use GPL'd code, you have to release everything that it touches via GPL. That's viral.
People have been burned by writing large pieces of software that used GPLed code in it, without understanding what their obligations under the GPL were until they had already made a significant investment into using it. It is a shame that those misconceptions occur, but it wasn't because the GPL tricked them into it.
People have been burned by having unprotected sex with someone who has the AIDS virus, without understanding what could happen to them until they had already made a significant penetration situation with their partner. It is a shame that those misconceptions occur, but it wasn't because the AIDS virus tricked them into it.
Just like with any other virus, there are ways to avoid getting it. It doesn't change the fact that once you're in contact with [virus or GPL'd code], the rest of your body [of work, or human] is now under the influence of [Virus or GPL] whether you like it or not.
Say there's "Big proprietary software project A", which has been under development for years. The people who developt A find "small GPL'd tidbit of code B" which does exactly fill a niche that they've wanted to fill.
This is a common example in these discussions.
People say you can, as the copyright holder of software B, release it under as many licenses as you want. But, why would you do that if you release it under the GPL? Cause pretty much anything else is going to place less restrictions on the people who are granted the license.
Say, you write software B, and you GPL it, but you also release it under a license which says that someone can use it, but must attribute the work? Why would anyone choose the GPL over that?
Or, what if you issue licenses on a case-by-case basis? If you allow the developers of Software Project A to add it into their project under a different, non-GPL license, what if someone calls them on it? I mean, what happens?
Trend Microsystems "Sysclean" package. It's just an exe file with the scanning engine, and you download the latest virus def patternfile, and it scans your computer. Very nice; TM I think is the best commercial AV product available. Sysclean executable: http://www.trendmicro.com/download/dcs.asp (under "Not a Trend Micro Customer") Pattern files: http://www.trendmicro.com/download/pattern.asp
I also carry, in the "Antivirus" folder: Various utilities I've collected for removing Symantec AV AVG Free installer (I tried to talk people into TrendMicro, because I honestly think it's better, but if they flat out refused, I'd install AVG for them - less virusy computers on teh intarwebs is a good thing) vcleaner - avg's somewhat less capable version of TM's sysclean package.
Also: A series of handy apps, including: 7zip - v313 (the older one seems to have less bloat) adobe acrobat Divx codec VLC Media Player Firefox Winamp 2.92 IttyBittyProcessManager Angry IP scanner Killbox MSRDPCLI.exe (MS Remote Desktop Client - for 2000/98 machines) vbrun60 files
and a folder called "Computer Cleanup", containing: ad aware personal (plus the latest defs.ref file, available form lavasoftusa.com) CWShredder (remove cool web search spyware) Hijack this ewido setup LSP Fix (for sneaky spywares that replace something with dns) WinsockXPFix BugOff RegVac Spybot S&D (plus latest update packs)
1.) Things that are explainable using rational scientific means. 2.) Things which we observe or will observe which cannot yet be explained using rational scientific means.
There's no 3.) Things which have no rational scientific explanation.
That makes it a little more clear.
We may never understand something, but that doesn't mean there isn't a perfectly valid scientific explanation for it. I believe there's one of those explanations for everything.
Right, "Theory" in science, and "Theory" in popular conversation are not the same thing. When you say "I don't know where I left my keys, but I've got a good theory", you mean hypothesis.
A "Scientific fact" is usually something that can be expressed as a simple equation or formula. Anything that can't be reduced to that level of certainty probably will never be anything but a Theory.
Slashdot Mirror
Plutonium, for example, is not soluble in water and is very heavy...
They had a huge ulterior motive called "dvd" last time.
Not completely analogous, but remember the PS2 did contain new technology when it was released.
~Wx
Ahhh, everyone. Everyone knows.
http://www.actsofgord.com/Proclamations/chapter02
The PS3 will not be "sold at a loss most of it's lifetime". Sony is not in the business of losing money. Thank you.
You're right. Part of the reason that I hate getting up is that I don't get enough sleep, and part of the reason that I don't get enough sleep is not that I'm sucked into eve, or into tv, or whatever at night. It's just cause i'm trying to let my brain settle from a day of work and an evening of taking care of a 2 year old and fixing dinner.
1.) That's the back of the patch panels. That's the building infrastructure, which should be done once, labeled well (each jack on the front of the patch panel corresponding to a plug in the wall of whatever office), tested and verified.
2.) Tone generator and probe wand.
That's what I thought when I saw that.
It's all well and good to leave service loops on the fronts, but that is part of the building infrastructure. That's something that you wire once, you test every connection, you double and triple check it, and then you never touch it again.
~Wx
Hi.
I'm 25, I work 40 hours a week. I'm married and have a 2 year old.
My day consists of: drag self out of bed, do best to wake up (not a morning person - I don't mind my job, I just mind waking up). Go to work. Leave work, pick kid up from daycare. Come home, put on Sesame Street eps from the Tivo, make dinner (I love to cook). Wife comes home around 6-7pm, we eat dinner. Kid gets a bath at around 7:45ish, goes to bed at 8:30.
After 8:30, I have until about 11:30 or 12:00 until I crawl in bed, so I have about 3 hours of time that's mine. Sometimes, I choose to spend it with the wife, sometimes I watch some TV, sometimes I do a chore or two (change cat litter, take out trash, whatever). But a lot of that time, I spend playing eve-online. And a lot of times, my wife spends a good bit of it playing WoW. I guess we do it to escape for a while. I really don't see anything wrong with it, though. Every once in a while, I'll sit down with Eve for a long play session, but that's usually on weekends. The wife doesn't raid, she likes essentially all the early quests you do by yourself and with a small party, so usually she creates a character, and in a couple of months levels it up to lvl 30 or 40, then gets bored and creates a new character, from a new class/race.
It is possible to play an MMO and not have it suck 18 hours of your day. As long as it doesn't take over your life, it can be therapeutic. Take care of your real-world duties, and after that, there's nothing wrong with a little escapism.
~Wx
Exactly.
Here's the data from my public linux mirror ( http://mirror.cs.vt.edu/ ):
What does it show?
Nothing!
Of user agents that I actually know what they are, it would appear that Windows 98 is actually the most popular OS that visits my site - at 3.6% of total hits! I would assume urlgrabber is abot, but what the hell is DA 5.5?
Don't put faith into statistics from one site.
Hrm.
See, I was under the pretty clear impression that, even if you got an IP allocation less than a
But, I guess my question is - would a RBHL use the listed route, or the allocated block?
~Wx
Because... the smallest allocation most routers will recognize when aggregating routes is a
You can't own *one* IP address, man. For starters, no one is going to sell you one IP address. For second, you would have to justify why you want to add an ASN to the global BGP route tables for every person who wants their own IP. For third, even if you did manage to get a "/32 allocation", you couldn't do anything with it. You need 4 IP addresses to connect to the BGP-routed tubes; a network, broadcast, local, and remote IP. I guess you could run a webserver on your router, but whatever. THEN even after all that, most BGP routers will not forward any global route that is less than a
The only way you can avoid getting lumped in with all the other spammers on your netblock is to own your own 256 IP address block and run your own router. You'll need something with an HDLC interface (you should be able to get an old bay networks router off ebay if you want it), and you'll need to get your own ASN. Then you'll need to buy enterprise level bandwidth, like a T1. You might be able to find someone to sell you a fractional T1 for $300-$400 a month.
~Wx
I'm gearing up for an almighty crisis in a couple of months vis-a-vis laptop / tablet PC support in Linux.
The CS department where I work has decided to do away with our walk-in-and-sit-down computer labs, in favor of open "collaberation spaces" where kids can bring their laptops and work in a more flexible environment. Whatever, I think there are going to be some problems when 40 people jump on a wireless network in a 300 sq. ft. classroom, but.... the big problem is:
This comes at the same time as the College of Engineering (of which our department is a part) has decided that all incoming freshmen need to have a tablet PC.
Yeah. Good thing no one in the CS department runs linux.
~Will
In Soviet America, phone listens to you!
The poster of the above comment is a friend of mine, aside from being a pre-space shuttle space program junkie and also a big fan of apollo 12, and he explains the above post as this (over IM):
I figured those of us who haven't spent weeks in the Air and Space museum, or read the audio transcripts from all available NASA flights, would want an explanation.
~Wx
Did you try the "new printer" - Connected to this computer locally, no plug and play - make a new port - TCP/IP - DNS name or IP of printer - then install the printer?
I've found windows printers tend to pretty much always work better if they assume they're directly connected, and the fact that you can lie and tell windows a tcp/ip connection constitutes the same thing as an rs232 plug to be very convienient. When you install a network printer it tends to bitch a lot and want to check and make sure the printer's there and whatever.
In fact, half of the printers I've installed, if they're network printers and also Laser printers, are in a situation so that windows thinks they're 1.) locally connected, and 2.) HP laserjet series II
~Wx
It's worth pointing out to those that don't play Eve-online: CCP (the developers) don't coddle you. If it isn't directly subverting game mechanics, it goes. Anything you want to do to make money in Eve-Online is ok - whether it's officially supported by the game or not - as long as it's not directly exploiting a programming error. Basically, preying on the stupidity of others is a good way to make money.
It's hypercapitalism (unless you're in evolution, I guess).
Let me go ahead and advertise for eve: If you're sick of playing whack-a-mole with your guildmate's health bars in WoW, or you're looking to step out of the kiddie pool, Eve is a pretty damn good game. You level up 24/7 whether you're playing or not, and the only motivation to play compulsively (a. la. everyone I know who plays WoW) is to make money - and once you get some skills and time under your character's belt, money isn't that hard to come by. This focuses the game on the wide universe of eve - production, research, industry, PvE, PvP (pretty much universally accepted as the best PvP MMO out there), or other ideas.
Also, player controlled territory. Check out this:
http://www.eve-files.com/media/corp/CRII/Latest.j
All the territory in the middle is "empire" space, relatively safe (every solar system is graded on safety, from 0.0 to 1.0), and home to many NPC's. Many eve players can (and do) make their living and have a lot of fun staying in empire space. Outside of that, though, is Player controlled territory. That territory is held by alliances, many of which have over 1000 pilots. In 0.0 space (alliance space), might makes right, and you hold your territory by force, or not at all. There are no NPC's other than NPC pirates which exist to provide income - stations are player owned, people must build or transport their own stuff, and if you venture out there, you're on your own.
It's a whole new world. Check it out - email me at fark@dunnclan.net for a 14 day trial.
~Will
Might I suggest 4.2.2.1?
's been my "test" DNS server for years.
From what I've heard (and read, for example in this month's maximum PC piece on home theater PC's), most TV's more than about 8 months old that have an HDMI port won't support the proper encryption.
Your mileage may vary. You know how rumors and wild speculation get at a new product launch.
(Because the HDTVs sold to date mostly have component inputs, and no HDMI input)
I'll go one further. Unless your HDMI input and your TV and your cable and your output support HDCP encryption, you get nothing, and must down-convert to Analog.
This month's maximumPC which I just received today has a review of various PVR software suites for a media center PC.
Windows Media Center gets low marks for being very content-provider specific, as opposed to user-focused. For example, they've added in (presumably at the content providers' request) the functionality to have some programs *cough*thesopranos*cough* automatically deleted after 2 weeks. Why? Well it doesn't serve the user. And then, there's DRM, watermarked WMV, nonstandard formats, etc.
On the other hand, the other software suites get high marks for being completely user focused and standars adhering.
Microsoft already has the users. They don't need to focus on that - they need to focus on decisions made around confrence tables. I.E. the sound needs to be manditory, so that everyone knows you're running WindowsVista(tm). Or, whatever. Screw the users, they'll buy it anyway.
You'd think this kind of thinking causes companies to go out of business, but... here we are.
~X
Dude, you don't seem to get it.
You "choose" to use GPL'd code or not the same way you "Choose" to have safe sex or not. Choosing to have safe sex doesn't make AIDS not a virus.
In the same way, choosing not to use GPL'd code in your project doesn't change the fact that if you *do* use GPL'd code, you have to release everything that it touches via GPL. That's viral.
People have been burned by writing large pieces of software that used GPLed code in it, without understanding what their obligations under the GPL were until they had already made a significant investment into using it. It is a shame that those misconceptions occur, but it wasn't because the GPL tricked them into it.
People have been burned by having unprotected sex with someone who has the AIDS virus, without understanding what could happen to them until they had already made a significant penetration situation with their partner. It is a shame that those misconceptions occur, but it wasn't because the AIDS virus tricked them into it.
Just like with any other virus, there are ways to avoid getting it. It doesn't change the fact that once you're in contact with [virus or GPL'd code], the rest of your body [of work, or human] is now under the influence of [Virus or GPL] whether you like it or not.
~X
Question:
Say there's "Big proprietary software project A", which has been under development for years. The people who developt A find "small GPL'd tidbit of code B" which does exactly fill a niche that they've wanted to fill.
This is a common example in these discussions.
People say you can, as the copyright holder of software B, release it under as many licenses as you want. But, why would you do that if you release it under the GPL? Cause pretty much anything else is going to place less restrictions on the people who are granted the license.
Say, you write software B, and you GPL it, but you also release it under a license which says that someone can use it, but must attribute the work? Why would anyone choose the GPL over that?
Or, what if you issue licenses on a case-by-case basis? If you allow the developers of Software Project A to add it into their project under a different, non-GPL license, what if someone calls them on it? I mean, what happens?
~Wx
Trend Microsystems "Sysclean" package. It's just an exe file with the scanning engine, and you download the latest virus def patternfile, and it scans your computer. Very nice; TM I think is the best commercial AV product available.
Sysclean executable:
http://www.trendmicro.com/download/dcs.asp (under "Not a Trend Micro Customer")
Pattern files:
http://www.trendmicro.com/download/pattern.asp
I also carry, in the "Antivirus" folder:
Various utilities I've collected for removing Symantec AV
AVG Free installer (I tried to talk people into TrendMicro, because I honestly think it's better, but if they flat out refused, I'd install AVG for them - less virusy computers on teh intarwebs is a good thing)
vcleaner - avg's somewhat less capable version of TM's sysclean package.
Also:
A series of handy apps, including:
7zip - v313 (the older one seems to have less bloat)
adobe acrobat
Divx codec
VLC Media Player
Firefox
Winamp 2.92
IttyBittyProcessManager
Angry IP scanner
Killbox
MSRDPCLI.exe (MS Remote Desktop Client - for 2000/98 machines)
vbrun60 files
and a folder called "Computer Cleanup", containing:
ad aware personal (plus the latest defs.ref file, available form lavasoftusa.com)
CWShredder (remove cool web search spyware)
Hijack this
ewido setup
LSP Fix (for sneaky spywares that replace something with dns)
WinsockXPFix
BugOff
RegVac
Spybot S&D (plus latest update packs)
Yep.
Well, lemme clarify.
1.) Things that are explainable using rational scientific means.
2.) Things which we observe or will observe which cannot yet be explained using rational scientific means.
There's no 3.) Things which have no rational scientific explanation.
That makes it a little more clear.
We may never understand something, but that doesn't mean there isn't a perfectly valid scientific explanation for it. I believe there's one of those explanations for everything.
~Wx
I'm no scientist, but as far as "where did the matter come from before the big bang" goes... isn't the answer "undefined"?
I think that's what I heard. There is no such thing as "before the big bang", as in, anything that happened before 0 on a timeline. Right?
Right, "Theory" in science, and "Theory" in popular conversation are not the same thing. When you say "I don't know where I left my keys, but I've got a good theory", you mean hypothesis.
A "Scientific fact" is usually something that can be expressed as a simple equation or formula. Anything that can't be reduced to that level of certainty probably will never be anything but a Theory.