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vttoth — October 31st, 2009
It’s black cat day again. I love (black) cats.
One thing I like a lot less is daylight savings time. It’s unnecessary and annoying. Wouldn’t it be simpler to just tell everyone to get up an hour earlier (or later) if it saves some energy? And I’m not even sure that it does.
Categories: Culture, Society | No Comments
vttoth — October 29th, 2009
This morning, I decided to clean my main workstation, as it’s been noisier than usual these last couple of days. Sure enough, it had plenty of dust and cat hair in it, but I also noted that a little motherboard fan was not working. I had spares, so I decided to replace it. Removing it is not easy, as it is in an awkward location, and I also had to resolder its connector onto the new fan.
That having been done, I rebooted my machine. Or, I tried to anyhow, but it failed to boot. It failed to do anything after the BIOS initialization. After a while, I realized that for some weird reason, it was trying to boot from an attached USB device. I disconnected the device, but still nothing… worse than nothing, actually, as it told me that my system disk is unbootable.
Actually, I should say disks, as I am using a dual drive mirror configuration in this computer. After poking around in it some more, I realized that I have inadvertently knocked out a cable from one of the drives. Unfortunately, reconnecting this cable didn’t help… the system was still unbootable.
And I’ve seen this before! A while back, a similar thing happened… one drive was disconnected, and when I reconnected it, the stupid RAID controller somehow managed to wipe the boot sector from both. What on Earth it did that for, I have no idea. But this is why I have a spare computer with identical drives and RAID controller… once I understood what was happening, the solution was to simply remove both drives, put them into USB cases, connect them to the other computer, and then copy over the boot sector using a raw disk editor. Easier said than done, of course, especially as I couldn’t find a raw disk editor on that spare machine (I swear I used to have one installed!) but eventually downloaded HxD, a very fine free disk editor that I have used before.
Two hours after I began, I had a working computer again. Still, it’s not a fun way to start a morning when you need both a soldering iron and a raw disk editor to get your computer working again…
Categories: Computers | No Comments
vttoth — October 29th, 2009
Yesterday, I phoned Rogers, basically because I wanted to give them some more of my money. At the same time, I also wanted to complain; several analog cable channels still have just one side (left or right) of the stereo audio (I first reported this almost a year ago, still unfixed), and I wanted to know why they’re suddenly charging me more, claiming that a bundle discount I used to get “expired”.
To make a long story short, after being interrupted and lectured about matters of life by an impertinent representative (one example: “Why do you want to have the analog service repaired when it will be discontinued in a few months anyhow?”) I asked for his supervisor. Predictably, I was told that the supervisor was not available, but they’d phone me back in 24 hours.
That was more than 24 hours ago. Needless to say, I’m still waiting… and I’m not the only one. I am getting more and more fed up with monopolies.
Categories: Communication, Local Ottawa | No Comments
vttoth — October 28th, 2009
It appears that the test launch of NASA’s Ares I-X rocket was successful. This is very good news indeed.
Categories: Space | No Comments
vttoth — October 26th, 2009
When will companies finally learn that Activation and copy protection do little to deter real piracy, only punish and alienate legitimate users? Here is something I just came across in a PC World blog:
“Microsoft support reps were still replying to users’ questions about product keys with a canned response citing ‘several reasons why a product key might not be accepted.’
“Essentially, either, ‘You mistyped it. The product key you typed doesn’t match the key assigned to Windows on your computer. Microsoft has identified the product key you entered as counterfeit,’ or ‘the product key has already been used on another computer,’ according to Microsoft.
“One person griped: ‘I Have been on the phone since 4 pm EST and I still don’t have a valid product code. Thank you Microsoft! Thank you for wasting my valuable time! Time is money and this had been a flagrant waste of it,’ wrote thatguy38.”
So all you’re trying to do is install legitimately purchased software, and you end up with a major headache, a useless computer, lots of wasted time, and on top of that you might get accused of theft. Talk about a strong incentive to either use cracked pirate copies or to forego using commercial software altogether, switching to open source instead.
Categories: Computers, Intellectual Property, Internet | No Comments
vttoth — October 24th, 2009
Recently, I bought a television series on DVD online. One of the DVDs appears unreadable. I noticed some scratches on it, but I also noticed that it happened to carry the HD DVD label. Is it possible that one of the disks in the boxed set was mistakenly an HD DVD? Unfortunately, I don’t have an HD DVD drive in which to test it.
Which reminded me that I’ve actually been meaning to buy an HD DVD drive before they vanish completely, just to be able to read HD DVDs in case I come across any. I looked and found one online that I liked. I tried to buy it… only to be informed repeatedly by Yahoo shopping that “there was a problem saving your information and basket”.
No matter, it can wait… I’ve also been meaning to do another thing this morning, namely to buy a new Microsoft Developer Network subscription. So I went to the MSDN Web site, clicked all the right buttons, logged in with my blasted Microsoft Live ID, and presto… I was told by Microsoft that they “are unable to validate your customer information and proceed with your order at this time”.
Looks like The Powers That Be just don’t want me to spend any money this morning. No matter, I have better things to do with it… and with my time, too.
Categories: Economy, Internet | No Comments
vttoth — October 22nd, 2009
I wanted to look up Barry Newman, the star of Vanishing Point, that legendary 1971 road movie. Accidentally, I entered Newman’s name into the URL field in Mozilla Firefox. Rather than telling me that I am full of nonsense or taking me to a search engine, Firefox instantly brought up the Internet Movie Database page on Barry Newman. What can I say… I know how it is done, but that doesn’t mean that I am unimpressed by how well it is done.
Categories: Film, Internet | No Comments
vttoth — October 15th, 2009
First, it was the multiverse. Then came Boltzmann brains. Now here’s another intriguing idea: the cancellation of the Superconducting Supercollider project in the 1990s and last year’s failure of one of the Large Hadron Collider’s magnets at CERN are just two manifestations of manifest bad luck brought about by the fact that the Higgs particle simply cannot be discovered; that its discovery at any time in the future propagates backwards in time, causing events that prevent its discovery in the first place.
An intriguing idea, though not precisely original, as something much like it was already published in the form of John Cramer‘s excellent science fiction novel, Einstein’s Bridge. And when I say intriguing, I mean intriguing… as the basis of a science fiction story. But as the basis of a scientific paper? Another adjective comes to my mind… appalling.
Categories: Physics | No Comments
vttoth — October 8th, 2009
There are uncanny coincidences in life, so much so that I sometimes wonder, are we all just one giant computer simulation using a less-than-perfect random number generator?
Take this, for instance… yesterday, I copied to a hard drive our collection of Monty Python DVDs. I also looked at one episode, and in it there was a sketch that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before, a sketch about flying sheep. Flying sheep??? But later yesterday, here’s what was on CBC Newsworld, also repeated this morning:
Flying sheep
Yes, flying sheep. Hanging sheep to be precise, as they are being carried across the rocky terrain on the Faeroe Islands.
Or how about this: a few days ago, my wife returned from Hungary with my mother’s old laptop (actually, my old laptop, but it’s been in my mother’s possession for many years) and much to our sadness, we found that its screen got broken during the trip. I know laptop screens break regularly, but it’s not something I run across often, indeed I think this was only the second time that I have seen a broken laptop screen up close. But today, I went to the barber… who, while waiting for customers, happened to be busy transferring files to a USB stick off a laptop with, you guessed it, a broken screen.
So is this just pure randomness? Or is the world suffering because God uses a broken random number generator?
Categories: Religion | No Comments
vttoth — October 8th, 2009
Google’s Street View has just been introduced in Canada.
Many people consider it a “gross invasion of privacy” that someone can take pictures of their streets and post it on the Internet. “What if they see my car in my driveway?” they scream at the top of their lungs, as if Google broke some long established taboo by photographing a public street.
But wait a minute… are these the same people who readily submit to having their laptops searched, its content, personal and business, examined and scrutinized, just so that customs can catch the occasional pedophile?
For what it’s worth, I couldn’t care less if Google posts photographs of my street or my house. On the other hand, I am so concerned about real invasions of my privacy, I am willing to face the wrath of customs agents by using Bruce Schneier’s method of laptop protection against unwarranted searches.
Curiously, most of the people commenting on Schneier’s article completely misunderstand his point: it’s not that I have anything illicit or shameful on my laptop that I need to hide. That would be easy. It’s that I object to the principle of strangers going through my entire life.
The really scary thing is that so many people, citizens of supposedly free countries, already adopted such a strong police state mentality: rather than looking for a lawful way to maintain their privacy, they are discussing various ways to break the law without getting caught. What I like about Schneier’s method is that it does not involve breaking the law: all my statements to customs agents would be truthful. As they say, no good deed goes unpunished… I’ll likely be harassed more than the smartalec who just creates a hidden partition on his laptop and keeps the visible partition sterile. But, at least I’ll suffer with a clean conscience, whatever good that does.
Categories: Computers, Internet, Legal, Society | No Comments
