Geek Stuff category archive

Upgrading the OS on the laptop.

Addendum:

I wasn’t able to get my Favorite LInux Distro on the box. Slackware is a three-CD set and, after the first CD ran, the CD drive opened and would not remount for the next CD.

This is definitely a hardware problem. The Slackware CDs have been tested in another machine.

The CD drive in this box has been acting weird for over a year. Sometimes it mounts and sometimes Dell throws a message that it “cannot detect the device in the modular bay blah blah blah.” Pressing the CD drive more tightly into the machine and rebooting solves the problem.

I’m not springing for a new CD drive for an almost-five-year-old laptop.

So I went with the Debian web install, which is a one-CD install, but pulls down three CD’s worth of software.

I’m now running Debian 5 with Gnome. Debian, like Slack, is a rock-solid distro that just works. It does not have Slackware’s elegant simplicity, but, what the heck.

It was tough fight, but I wrestled the computer into submission. (I always do.)

The firewall is working, the AV is working, the network is working, the theme is configured to my liking, and Opera (which includes my email database) and Pan have been restored from backup. Total time from install boot to full functionality: Two hours.

Here. If you use a computer (and, if you are reading this, you do), read it.

When someone logs into a Slackware computer at the beginning of a session, the computer displays a saying, a joke, or anecdote. It’s a Unix thing. Today, my computer told me to

Behold the warranty–the bold print giveth,
the fine print taketh away.

Some nice, mostly funny pictures here. (To understand some of them, remember that the Linux symbol is Tux, the penguin.)

My favorite is below the fold.

Read more »

Here, via GNC.

I took down the “Torture Awareness” bit on my sidebar.

Torquemada is no longer in the government.

I replaced it with a link to Geekazine, where Jeffrey has been letting me fly my geek flag.

Websites that play audio or videos without asking permission.

I updated this page with a picture.

Read more »

Not all bigots are stupid.

Just most of them.

Honest to Pete, the modern Civil Rights struggle started over 50 years ago. Why haven’t bigoted white folks figured out what they can say in public yet?

The long-sought “average computer user”:

Then I realized that for two weeks straight, she never even realized she was using my computer and not her own. Yes, hers runs MacOS X. Yes, mine runs only Fedora 10 + KDE 4.2 …and yet, she never noticed the difference.

“If you are an average Windows user, you probably don’t understand what the registry is. The sad part is, Microsoft doesn’t either.”

(More on the registry here.)

“Everything is a just few hundred clicks away”:

Commentary here.

Via Andrew Sullivan.

Also posting at Geekazine.

Via James Hicks, who reports that the hardware includes

150 HP DL165s dual quad-core AMD 2354 processors 2GB-4GB RAM
50 HP DL365s dual dual-core AMD 2218 processors 4GB-16GB RAM
5 HP DL185s dual quad-core AMD 2354 processors 4GB RAM

Not to mention switches, routers, firewalls, and heaven knows what else.

One of the things I like about my new MP3 player is that, if I shut it down in the middle of a podcast and later turn it back on, it gives me a chance to pick up right where I left off with two clicks.

I just discovered that Comcast’s On Demand does something similar, except that it takes three clicks. I paused a show, then went downstairs to fight with Windows (Windows put up a titanic struggle, but I wrestled it down to the electrons for three falls) and came back to find the On Demand main menu screen on display.

But I was able to restart my program at the 27 minute mark.

A Royal Navy nuclear submarine and a French vessel have been damaged in a collision deep below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

Apparently, both the French and the Brits use Windows for Warships.

At the Tech Scoop:

Today, Friday, February 13 at exactly 3:31:30 PM (PST) Unix time will equal 1234567890. The world will celebrate this milestone with global 1234567890 parties.

I predict that this will be as successful as Microsoft Bob:

Microsoft Corp. on Thursday hired a 25-year veteran of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to oversee the development and opening of the software giant’s first retail stores.

’nuff said:

The economy is so bad that even the company behind “Guitar Hero,” the hottest video game franchise in the world, couldn’t muster a profit in the holiday quarter.

In Austin, Texas.