This, really, is just a test, to see if WordPress works on my freshly updated Xperia X10 phone, letting me post to my blog.
OK, it works. Android 2.1 is nice, well, much nicer than 1.6. At least now I can Skype or use Acrobat to view PDFs.
One thing I need to figure out is how to stop this blessed thing from replacing every word it doesn’t recognize with a silly guess (WordPress=Sorceress?)
I once built my own not-so-micro processor as a hobby project of sorts. It was loads of fun.
There is another way of having loads of fun: how about visually simulating an old 8-bit microprocessor as it executes instructions? What can I say… it’s neat. Brings back lots of memories from the days when I was earning a living writing code for the Commodore-64.
So here I am, posting to my blog from my new smartphone. Neat. I suppose it was time for me to join others and acquire my very own 21st century toy… I have to confess though, the touch screen is nice but it’s much easier to type on a real keyboard…
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.
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’…
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.
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.
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?
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?
So why is Excel 2010 crashing on a spreadsheet that I have been using for years, containing my bookkeeping? Is this supposed to be the latest and greatest of Microsoft Office?
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.
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.
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…
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.”
One lousy plastic bit. That’s all that was needed to take out my main workstation while I was in Hungary.
Fortunately, it did not interfere with my ability to access my data, as I was set up with a backup workstation that I could access using Remote Desktop while traveling. But still, it was most annoying when my wife called and asked if it was me that was messing with that computer, as it was at first making some strange noises, and then went dark.
The plastic bit in question was one of the bits to which the CPU heat sink is latched. It broke. The heat sink didn’t quite fall off, but as it was no longer pushed securely against the CPU, the CPU overheated and shut down. (A good thing, too. Some older generation CPUs failed to shut down under such circumstances and instead, burned a nice black hole in the middle of the motherboard.)
Grumble, I am old enough to remember when TVs had tubes and the repairman was a regular visitor. Back then, solid state electronics held a promise: it was supposed to last forever. But that’s because nobody at the time foresaw all the innovative ways modern computers have come up with to die at the most inopportune moments. What worries me is that the same thing, a computer disabled because of one lousy plastic bit, can happen anytime anywhere… even if said computer, say, is the one running the fly-by-wire system of a modern jetliner or controls the X-ray dose you receive in a medical device.
Of course those systems are redundant. But so was mine… I did have that backup workstation, after all. Nonetheless… I wish these things were a tad more reliable.
Like any good geek, I like computer games. I’m not obsessed by them (the image of Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons serves as a powerful deterrent) but I do enjoy the occasional play. And I certainly have the disposable income to buy a new title when it comes out.
Except that I haven’t bought a new game in years. Ubisoft’s official explanation about their “always on” digital rights management system is a good example why. A company that needs to know every time I am playing, a game that kicks me out of my Internet connection drops momentarily… why would I want to pay good money for that? Come to think of it, why would I even want something like that for free on my computer?
The answer is, I don’t.
I have no statistics to prove it, but I think DRM does far more harm than good. It may (or may not) deter piracy. On the other hand, I bet that the number of customers alienated and put off by DRM far exceeds the number of those who suddenly see the light and, as a result of DRM, start paying for stuff they previously stole. So the net result may very well be a decrease in sales.
Perhaps one of these days, software, especially game software companies will come to their senses again and realize this. Until then, I’ll just enjoy the occasional shootout with some heavily pixelated aliens in Duke Nukem.
Today is the second Tuesday of the month, and it’s Windows Update day. Not my favorite day of the month.
So here’s a curious question: why is it that I was able to upgrade Microsoft Virtual PC from version 2004 to version 2007 and it did NOT require a reboot… but when I installed a security update to version 2007 (making sure that Virtual PC as well as all its drivers are actually shut down) a reboot was necessary?
I don’t think I’ll ever figure out this Microsoft reboot misery.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a nifty Web site called panopticlick: it shows you just how unique your browser is. Even browser configurations that I thought were surely non-unique (such as a vanilla Internet Explorer setup on a Windows XP virtual machine or the off-the-shelf Mozilla Firefox that is installed on my Linux server but almost never used) turned out to have unique signatures, for which plugins, most notably Flash, are largely to blame. And you thought the [insert name of favorite most-hated intelligence agency here] needed cookies or some other tricks to track your every move!
This is becoming almost traditional: just before I embark on a trip, my otherwise ultra-reliable server crashes while performing some routine operation.
Back when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth and the Internet was still an exotic novelty for most people, my wife and I spent an unforgettable few weeks driving around the United States.
My server has been in existence for more than two years by then. No Web site yet… that came later that year. (Actually, I already had a rudimentary version up and running courtesy of my Internet service provider, but I digress.) The server was “connected” to the Internet via dial-up; it dialed regularly (once an hour; my wife and I still remember the little touch-tone “song” that we heard many times a day) to exchange e-mail, and it dialed automatically if I tried to visit a Web site, for instance. Otherwise, the modem line was open for dial-in… and I planned to dial into the server regularly while traveling.
Except that on the morning of our planned departure, the server crashed. Not a minor crash either… its hard drive died. Fortunately, not an instant death, and I was able to obtain a replacement drive and rescue all data.
Though it was still a genuine, no-kidding, bona fide kernel panic, today’s crash was a little less dramatic. I was merely testing streaming video from the server, as I always find it useful to be able to watch an Ottawa newscast in the evening when I am out of town. Instead of streaming the darn video, the video capture driver (which I’ve been using, completely incident free, for many years) crashed, taking the server down. Most unsettling!
My laptop (the one I don’t want customs inspectors to be poking around on) runs Windows 7 (just upgraded from Vista). However, on it I also run a replica of my main Linux server, in a virtual machine.
After the upgrade, VMware Server, which wasn’t playing very nicely under Windows Vista either, started to give me serious trouble. The VM was due for an upgrade anyway, as its virtual hard drive was much too small. So I decided to… well, before upgrading the VM, I decided to check if there is perhaps a better option than VMware.
I first tried the obvious: Microsoft’s Virtual PC, which is a standard add-on to Windows 7 Ultimate. Nope… it didn’t play nicely at all, not with a Linux VM. So what else is out there? This is how I happened upon Sun’s VirtualBox, a (mostly) open source virtual machine solution.
I installed VirtualBox on a 64-bit Windows 7 test machine. Worked fine! Then I installed a complete Slackware 13.0 setup. Still good. I then did a full backup of my server to this VM. This also worked, though there was a minor snag: in the morning after the backup, I noticed that the host OS was completely locked up and needed a hard reset. Was it related to VirtualBox? Perhaps.
I then transferred the VM to another 64-bit Windows 7 machine and there, too, it worked well. So now it was time to move it to my 32-bit Windows 7 laptop. As Murphy’s Law dictates, that’s where I had the most trouble. For some reason (leftover nastiness after the VMware uninstall?) VirtualBox only sees network interfaces if it is run as Administrator. I also needed to enable multiprocessor support in the VM in order to eliminate a nasty (especially on a laptop!) problem of the VM consuming too much CPU, even when idle. Oh yes, and there was a crash, too.
Right now, all seems to be well though, and the VM works reliably, much better in fact than VMware. So maybe I have found the right solution. I’ll find out soon, when I’ll be doing a little bit of travel with this laptop in my suitcase.