blogging
Has been light lately, I know. I’m in the final stages of writing the first draft of a book, and it is absorbing all my mental attention. More blogging will come in a week or so, once I’m done.
-JM
Star Trek vs. Microsoft Windows
I am vexed. I just lost two and a half days of work.
(It’s hard to back up a major computer system when you’re actually assembling it.)
This makes me think of the new Star Trek movie. What would happen if the crew of the Enterprise had to use a Microsoft operating system?
###
Mr. Spock: Captain, a Klingon warship is approaching.
Kirk: Red alert! Lock phasers and arm torpedoes. Mr. Sulu, fire on my mark.
(The KLINGON WARSHIP ominously fills the viewscreen.)
Kirk: Fire!
(Nothing happens.)
Kirk: Mr. Sulu, I said fire!
Sulu: I…I can’t, sir! I’m still waiting for phasers to lock on.
Kirk: Then lock phasers and fire!
Sulu: Sir, my console only says that “Windows Explorer Is Not Responding: Restart or Close the Program?”
(The ENTERPRISE shakes as the KLINGON WARSHIP opens fire. Since seat belts haven’t been invented in the 24th century, the crew is flung dramatically from their stations.)
Kirk: Dammit! Restart, restart!
Sulu: Restarting Windows Explorer now, sir!
(Long pause.)
Sulu: I’m only getting a blue screen, sir.
Mr. Spock: Captain, I suspect this phenomenon is known as “hanging up”, a colloquial Earth expression that means…
Kirk: I know what it means, Spock! What do we do about it?
(The ENTERPRISE shudders again. Kirk’s shirt is torn as he rolls across the deck.)
Mr. Spock: We must reboot the computer, sir.
Kirk: Kirk to Engineering! Scotty, reboot the main computer.
Scotty: But, sir. We haven’t properly completed shutdown. An improper shutdown could lead tae data loss! I cannae change the laws of…
Kirk: Dammit, Mr. Scott, that’s an order! Restart the computer!
Scotty: Aye, sir.
(SCOTTY yanks the power cord on the ENTERPRISE main computer and plugs it in again. Suddenly every display on the bridge goes dark, and is soon replaced by the MICROSOFT WINDOWS logo.)
Kirk: C’mon…c’mon…c’mon…
(The ENTERPRISE shakes again from a direct hit. A console explodes, killing an ENSIGN IN A RED SHIRT. No one pays any attention.)
Kirk: Scotty, I need that computer now!
Scotty: Coming up now, sir!
(The WINDOWS STARTUP SOUND is heard. KIRK stands.)
Kirk: Finally! Lock phasers and fire!
Mr. Spock: Captain, the computer appears to be displaying some sort of message.
(The viewscreen turns blue, displaying the message “Windows Is Installing Important Updates. Please Do Not Shut Down Your Computer. 0 Percent Complete.)
Kirk: You have got to be kidding me! What kind of fu…
(The KLINGON WARSHIP fires again, destroying the ENTERPRISE.)
###
Of course, things wouldn’t go any better if the Enterprise used Linux.
Mr. Spock: Captain, a Klingon warship is approaching.
Kirk: Red alert! Lock phasers and arm torpedoes. Mr. Sulu, fire on my mark.
(The KLINGON WARSHIP ominously fills the viewscreen.)
Sulu: Typing the command to lock phasers now. Let’s see…sudo lockphasers -device /proc/wpns/phasers/phaserbank1 | target -enemy /proc/ships/enemyships/enemyklingonships/birdofprey | firephasers -power 100 -duration 5 /proc/ships/enemyships/enemyklingonships/birdofprey.
(An error message fills the viewscreen.)
Kirk: Mr. Sulu, what the hell does “bash: command not found” mean?
Sulu: I don’t know…wait, I must have used the wrong syntax on the target command…
Mr. Spock: You n00b, you don’t have a shell script for that? Srsly? RTFM!
(The KLINGON WARSHIP fires, destroying the ENTERPRISE.)
###
And things wouldn’t be much better if the Enterprise used a Mac, either.
Mr. Spock: Captain, a Klingon warship is approaching.
Kirk: Red alert! Lock phasers and arm torpedoes. Mr. Sulu, fire on my mark.
(The KLINGON WARSHIP ominously fills the viewscreen.)
Sulu: Sir, we don’t actually have a computer.
Kirk: What do you mean we don’t have a computer?
Sulu: We couldn’t afford a Macintosh, sir.
Mr. Spock: I’m afraid Lieutenant Sulu is correct. We could not to spend upwards of $2000 on a Mac Pro.
Kirk: Son of a…
(The KLINGON WARSHIP fires, destroying the ENTERPRISE.)
-JM
ISO burning in Windows 7
The feature is finally included, according to this article.
About time. Many Linux distros have had this capability for quite some time.
-JM
Firefox 3.5
Is imminent.
-JM
Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope Speed Boost
You know, it’s funny. For all the stuff I’ve done on Ubuntu 9.04, it’s all been in virtual machines. I finally upgraded my main desktop to 9.04 today (I was waiting until I could afford a second internal hard drive), and I was pleasantly surprised to see how much faster the boot process was than 8.10.
Much criticism has been written about how the Ubuntu six-month release cycle produces only incremental upgrades, rather than major releases - but those incremental upgrades add up. The first version of Ubuntu I used was 5.10, and it is to 9.04 as a sword is to a fifty-caliber minigun. Both are weapons…but one is rather farther along the evolutionary path.
And it got there incrimentally.
-JM
HP Mini 1000 Series VGA Cable, part number FY828AA
As I mentioned earlier, I recently upgraded to an HP Mini 1030 netbook, and I’ve been quite pleased with it so far. I think the hardware is quite possibly the best netbook-class hardware currently available, and the keyboard is simply a joy to use. I didn’t think it was possible to have such an excellent typing experience on so small of a device, but I’m pleased to have been wrong.
However, the Mini doesn’t have a standard VGA-out port; it’s got some sort of bizarre propreitary video port, which connects into an HP-custom VGA dongle. And finding that dongle has been difficult, to say the least, but I finally tracked it down.
And, of course, it’s out of stock.
It’s cliche to say that the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, but I suspect HP occasionally forgets that it has hands at all.
-JM
rise of the machines - the analog to digital conversion
Tonight, at 12:01 AM. Granted, they should have done this back in February, but Congress wimped out.
-JM
Real men use Ubuntu Linux; Apple is for the weak!
Or so declares Gizmodo, in what has to be the freshest piece of troll-bait I’ve read this year:
“A leveling of class distinctions in Apple products is going to sting people who valued the affectation of elitism that came with using Apple’s top-of-the-line products. Even subtle differences—like the premium paid for the matte black MacBook over the otherwise identical shiny white one, were signals, beamed out to the others in the coffee shop, declaring who was “da boss.” You know, the guys who wore the white earbuds with pride five years ago. Admittedly, sometimes those guys need a left hook to the kidneys (and sometimes, we are those guys). Maybe it’s good to make the best technology accessible to everybody, with no indicators of who paid more for what.”
In other words, numerous people bought Apple products just because they wanted to partake of the aura of cool. You know, a bit like the balding middle-aged guy who buys the sports car and suddenly thinks that 19-year-old cheerleaders are going to start draping themselves over him. (This only works if you also have a net worth of $5 million or higher.) Or like all those housewives in the 1990s who had their hair cut like Jennifer Aniston from “Friends” because they thought it would magically make them look like Jennifer Aniston from “Friends”. (It didn’t.)
Of course, owning a MacBook Pro could indicate that “I paid $2000 for a that I could have bought for $700 on the PC side, were I not infatuated with OS X”. But thanks to the magic of marketing, chumphood is an indicator of cool. However, the true sign of technological savvy is using Linux on a regular basis. In other words, I agree with this guy:
“Anyhow, it’s important to maintain your perspective and keep in mind that using Apple products doesn’t make you a better person. That’s what Linux is for.”
I mean, if there’s one sure indication of intellectual vigor and reproductive fitness, it’s running a blog with frequent Linux-related posts.
-JM
migrate printer settings on Windows 2000 & Windows XP with Windows Print Migrator 3.1
This thing is exceedingly useful, ladies and gentlemen, especially if you have rare or obsolete printer equipment with a plethora of finicky drivers and specific configuration settings. (I practically guarantee that every organization on God’s green Earth will have at least one ancient, obsolete printer that cannot be changed for any reason, a printer whose manufacturer probably went out of business with the fall of the Soviet Union.) To think I used to mess around with exporting Registry keys and carrying them to the next computer in order to move printer settings over! The Print Migrator bundles up all your printer settings into one nice CAB file, which you can then unpack and install on your destination computer. This is, of course, much easier than digging through the Registry.
Download it here. If you deal with old printers a lot, believe me, this will come in handy.
-JM
Update Adobe Flash Player on Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope
I sat down to write a post describing how to update an Adobe Flash Player pluging for Firefox on Ubuntu. Hulu and YouTube and whatnot occasionally update their Flash Player requirements, and updating a Flash plugin on Ubuntu is actually trickier than installing one from scratch.
Fortunately, someone else already wrote directions on how to do it.
-JM