vttoth — August 30th, 2010
No, I didn’t smoke anything unhealthy. The “cloud”, in this case, does not refer to a state of mind nor, for that matter, to structures formed by condensed water vapor in the atmosphere. I am talking about the computing “cloud”, the idea that you are using the Internet to access computing resources, the physical location of which is irrelevant.
This past weekend, I decided to set up a virtual server in the “cloud”. I am amazed how cheaply it can be done nowadays. And one day, it may help me migrate away from a home office based server to one that I no longer have to maintain myself. That’s the long-term plan anyway. For now, I am taking the first tentative steps as I am exploring my brand new server and test its robustness and reliability.
Categories: Computers, Internet |
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vttoth — July 29th, 2010
Here is another gem, courtesy of Microsoft:
Darn, I am hungry this morning. No, I am not going to eat an item from a container of ‘eaten items’…
Categories: Computers |
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vttoth — July 1st, 2010
In recent years, one of the most welcome feature in Web browsers was tabbed browsing. Implementing in effect what Microsoft calls MDI (Multiple Document Interface), it helped reduce screen clutter while viewing multiple Web pages.
Meanwhile, Microsoft made a (valid) observation that MDI is application-centric, and for new users, not intuitive; the idea is that each document should live in its own window, regardless of which application is used to render or edit it.
Fortunately, even Microsoft were wise enough to recognize that for many (especially professional) users, who keep multiple documents open, SDI (Single Document Interface) is not always the best choice. On the contrary, MDI allows one to work significantly more efficiently when keeping a large number of documents open. Therefore, Office 2010 continues to support MDI mode (thankfully), although not near as elegantly as a Web browser, with visible tabs.
Enter Adobe. They also chose to follow in Microsoft’s footsteps. Unfortunately, in their infinite wisdom they also chose to take a step further: they not only made SDI mode the preferred mode, they removed MDI mode altogether. They offered the lamest excuses: 1. that’s not how it’s done on the Mac, 2. MDI mode was already considered deprecated in version 8, 3. Microsoft told us to do it, 4. it’s more work, and 5. it’s more costly to test.
Thankfully, Acrobat’s product manager came to his senses after receiving overwhelmingly negative feedback. He closed the discussion by referring to the proverbial dead horse.
Except that news of the horse’s death might have been slightly exaggerated. The discussion in question took place in October 2008. I cannot help but notice that my calendar says July 2010, yet Acrobat 9 is still the latest version, still sorely missing an MDI mode.
Categories: Computers |
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vttoth — June 7th, 2010
To all the smartalecs on support forums out there: what the hell is wrong with you? If I ask someone with a map about the route from town A to B, I expect them to tell me directions, not question my sanity for wanting to drive to town B in the first place. Similarly, if someone posts a question in the form of, say, “I have device A giving error message B under operating system C, how do I solve this problem?”, the one thing they are absolutely, positively NOT interested in is lectures such as “Why would you be using device A?” or “What kind of a moron still uses operating system C?” and the like. If you don’t know the answer, can’t you just shut up and not pollute Google searches with your asinine remarks?
For instance, today I was trying to use a floppy disk. (Yes, people still need floppy disks sometimes. Not because they live in the stone age, but because they may be using a floppy to update a motherboard BIOS, for instance.) I ran into a problem. I searched Google, and found a support forum where a similar problem was discussed. There were a few helpful answers. But then, look at this little exchange:
>>> The other thing is - why do you need it?
<<< I need the floppy to run the Western Digital program to test
<<< the drive [...]
>>> If you're getting lots of bad sectors, then the drive has
>>> problems and you should be getting it replaced under warranty
>>> warranty, not attempting to 'fix' it. [...]
<<< yes, but the thing with western digital is before you can send
<<< the drive back you need an error code [...]
>>> But what error code could possibly be worse than a bad sector?
>>> Tell them the "error code" is xxxxxxxxxxxx bad sectors!
How bloody helpful. This really told the guy how to fix the floppy disk problem that he was seeking help for.
Categories: Computers, Internet |
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vttoth — June 1st, 2010
The other day, I updated the Java VM on this machine, and as part of the process, I uninstalled the previous version. During the uninstallation process, I was presented with the following dialog:
I’m not sure what purpose the checkbox in this dialog serves. By checking it, do I suppress the confirmation dialog for all future uninstallations? That doesn’t sound smart. But what is the alternative? A checkbox that serves no purpose other than helping me avoid having to click the mouse one extra time just in case I happen to reinstall, and then uninstall, the 6.19 version of the Java VM?
Categories: Computers |
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vttoth — May 29th, 2010
If killing a motherboard was a criminal act, I guess it’d have a fancy Latin name, too, like matrotabulicide or something.
Fortunately, it is not criminal to murder a computer motherboard just yet, at least not if it is one that you own. Today, sadly, I managed to accomplish just this, prematurely ending the life of a computer I only recently put together for my wife. No, it was not first-degree murder, more like man-, or rather, motherboardslaughter: I did not set out to do damage, on the contrary, I was hoping to get rid of an annoying little problem (no keyboard after the system came back from hibernation) by upgrading its BIOS.
The consequences of the attempt are, sadly, known to many: after the BIOS upgrade program happily reported success and attempted a reboot (I did everything by the book, and there were no signs of any trouble), the system became completely non-responsive, suggesting a failure of the BIOS boot sequence.
Now usually, there are ways to recover from a failed BIOS upgrade. Many BIOSes recognize a corrupt image and drop into an emergency boot flash mode that allows recovery from, for instance, a floppy disk. I’ve done this before, more than once. However, in this case the process did not work: even when I manually “forced” a boot into the boot flash mode by shorting some of the BIOS pins, it just stubbornly refused to attempt to read anything from a floppy, the hard drive, or a CD-ROM. I even tried booting using a POST diagnostic card, but I became none the wiser.
So that’s it. It is time to move on. It wasn’t a new motherboard, but it still had plenty of useful life left in it, so I am sad to see it go. But investing further effort into it is just pointless. I could order an identical motherboard off eBay for about $80 total, including shipping from China, but why would I want to spend that kind of money on 7-year old technology, when I can buy a decent current motherboard, dual-core CPU, and 2GB memory for less than three times that amount?
The said thing is that it means not only junking this motherboard, but also the accompanying Socket 754 single-core CPU and 1 GB DDR memory, as I have no other Socket 754 or DDR motherboards. I hate contributing to the world’s landfills. I wonder just how much otherwise still flawless electronics ends up in those landfills because of BIOS failures?
Categories: Computers |
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vttoth — May 16th, 2010
Recently, news have been circulating about a new form of phishing attack that doesn’t rely on some unpatched vulnerability; rather, it uses a legitimate feature of Adobe Acrobat to hijack users’ computers.
Sophos Labs offer a detailed description of how it works. (Basically, it’s the ability of Acrobat to open non-PDF attachments that is abused, tricking a user into running an executable program.) They also offer advice on how to disable this feature. I think it’s a darn good idea to follow their suggestion: most of us never deal with PDF documents containing non-PDF attachments anyhow.
Categories: Computer Security, Internet |
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vttoth — May 6th, 2010
What on Earth was going on with Procter & Gamble stocks today?
Yup, glitch. CNN is confirming. One of these days the world might come to an end because someone clicked the wrong button with a mouse.
Categories: Computers, Economy |
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vttoth — May 2nd, 2010
It was not a virus after all. I have no idea what made my old workstation unstable, but after a monster 30-hour scan of its hard drives, all I found was 4 potential threats, none of which was an actual infection. One was a malicious Java applet that never had a chance to do harm because it relied on an old version of the JVM, and I tend to keep my software up-to-date. Another was a 20-year old joke program, pretending to hijack an unsuspecting victim’s computer, which for some reason Microsoft Security Essentials marked as a threat. The third was the user registration program in an old Iomega installation kit, whereas the fourth was the remote control software VNC, which can be harmful if someone puts it on your computer without your knowledge, but that wasn’t the case here.
So then, what was it? My guess is ailing hardware, perhaps the video card. But… it no longer really matters anymore. I’ve done the deed, swapped computers, and successfully set up my new quad-core system to work with essentially all of my peripheral hardware (no mean feat, considering that peripheral hardware, in this case, includes instruments like spectrum analyzers connected via GPIB.)
Now, I can actually get back to work…
Categories: Computers |
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vttoth — April 29th, 2010
I’ve been having computer trouble. My main (but soon-to-be backup) computer has been acting up lately. Since I fixed the broken heatsink, it crashed several times. Is it aging hardware? Is it a virus? An instability due to a recent update? Or perhaps, possibly, the result of the fact that most recently, I plugged the network into the gigabit Ethernet interface, as opposed to the 100Base-T one? (This motherboard has two network connectors.) I know for a fact that the gigabit Ethernet interface used to cause problems, but I thought that was fixed by driver updates ages ago. Perhaps not.
Anyhow, since I swapped the network cable, the system has been stable for days. Today, its video driver crashed, but that’s not new: the complicated driver set of my ATI All-In-Wonder card (combination high-end graphics and TV tuner card; well, whatever passed for high-end in 2005, that is) was never 100% stable, but it is stable enough for reasonably reliable use. Today’s crash, too, was recoverable: I was able to Remote Desktop into the machine from another computer. So… I still don’t know what has been causing the real crashes in recent weeks.
Anyhow, after restarting the system, I logged back onto my Linux server from it, and I was presented with the usual UNIX login fortune cookies. Including one I never saw before, and one that only those can truly appreciate who used to program in FORTRAN and are familiar with implicitly declared variables and the default implicit declaration rules:
“God is real, unless declared integer.”
Categories: Computers |
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