One of my pet peeves in computers is the continued reliance of hardware makers to create updates, like BIOS, that are designed to be used with floppy disk drives, despite the fact that a lot of the updates are now larger than the 1.44MB that a traditional floppy disk could hold. For almost ten years, USB ports have been standard on systems and it is as difficult to find a new system without USB ports as it is to find one with a floppy drive (although you can buy external floppy drives that plug in through USB).
To complicate things even more, there is not a standard for writing files to USB or CDs for use in flashing hardware devices. As a person who works on servers a lot, this is a real pain!
However, I finally found a link that is fairly easy to use to make a USB drive into a bootable DOS drive that files can be written and deleted from: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/46707-ms-dos-bootable-flash-drive-create.html
So hopefully, I'll remember this the next time I have to do a flash! :)
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
Lemmings - to the sea!
I find it amusing the near hysteria being reported over the past couple of weeks over people quitting Facebook, invoking "mass Facebook 'suicide' pacts", the mirror of a couple of years ago when everyone was jumping on the Facebook bandwagon. The reality is that in any online social media site - including Twitter & Flickr - user information can be used, either directly or indirectly by the site owners or by people hacking the sites.
People, especially those who have grown up with the internet, forget that what goes on the internet can stay on the internet a long, long time. Furthermore, database mining tools are very powerful in the hands of people that know how to use them. However people, to wave your hands in panic is not only disingenuous, it shows the vast ignorance of what the computers do best - store and sort data.
While the actions of Facebook over the past few years are deplorable in the sense of sacrificing their customer's privacy and trust for a quick buck, most people should be smacked for not taking proper precautions in the first place. If you don't want people to know certain information, don't put it on the internet, or at least control what information is being released. An easy fix for email accounts is to create a junk email account on Hotmail, Yahoo, Google or whatever and use that as a way of screening who gets to email you.
People - take some personal responsibility here! Facebook is just a communication tool!
People, especially those who have grown up with the internet, forget that what goes on the internet can stay on the internet a long, long time. Furthermore, database mining tools are very powerful in the hands of people that know how to use them. However people, to wave your hands in panic is not only disingenuous, it shows the vast ignorance of what the computers do best - store and sort data.
While the actions of Facebook over the past few years are deplorable in the sense of sacrificing their customer's privacy and trust for a quick buck, most people should be smacked for not taking proper precautions in the first place. If you don't want people to know certain information, don't put it on the internet, or at least control what information is being released. An easy fix for email accounts is to create a junk email account on Hotmail, Yahoo, Google or whatever and use that as a way of screening who gets to email you.
People - take some personal responsibility here! Facebook is just a communication tool!
Monday, March 08, 2010
Moving from Ubuntu to openSUSE
Been several months since I've posted, but I've been distracted. Anyway, started using openSUSE-11.2 yesterday as I've been having problems with Ubuntu 9.04 and 9.10. I've been having issues with using wireless on 9.04 (I've got a wireless NIC that isn't supported on 9.04), but there are known problems with software RAIDs on 9.10, and from what I've been reading, will continue to be in the upcoming 10.4. Disappointing, as I've grown to love working on Ubuntu. But maybe time for something new....
So after downloading an ISO that requires a DVD (another thing to like about Ubuntu - you only need a CD to install), I was somewhat underwhelmed by the install experience. There were several bugs that occurred, including putting the GRUB boot loaded in the wrong portion of the hard-drive (you aren't given an option during the initial install). Also, you can only choose KDE or Gnome for the desktop and must install the other after logging into the new system. On the other hand, it installed itself on the RAID with no issue and connected to the wireless network easily once I entered the required info.
Despite some amazing upgrades to desktop environment in KDE 4, I still prefer Gnome. I find that KDE looks less polished and tries too much to be similar to the look and feel of Windows. Conversely, Gnome looks more unique and sophisticated. Also I generally like Gnome's applications better. The bad thing is in SUSE, the menu is too complex to easily open up and quickly find an application to launch - rather you must open a full page menu that takes up most of the screen and then search for it. Ubuntu's menu system is more simple and I find more functional.
First impressions are that openSUSE will be fine once I adjust to it. I must admit - I much prefer the green themes that openSUSE uses as compared to the nauseating oranges and browns that Ubuntu has traditionally gone for!
So after downloading an ISO that requires a DVD (another thing to like about Ubuntu - you only need a CD to install), I was somewhat underwhelmed by the install experience. There were several bugs that occurred, including putting the GRUB boot loaded in the wrong portion of the hard-drive (you aren't given an option during the initial install). Also, you can only choose KDE or Gnome for the desktop and must install the other after logging into the new system. On the other hand, it installed itself on the RAID with no issue and connected to the wireless network easily once I entered the required info.
Despite some amazing upgrades to desktop environment in KDE 4, I still prefer Gnome. I find that KDE looks less polished and tries too much to be similar to the look and feel of Windows. Conversely, Gnome looks more unique and sophisticated. Also I generally like Gnome's applications better. The bad thing is in SUSE, the menu is too complex to easily open up and quickly find an application to launch - rather you must open a full page menu that takes up most of the screen and then search for it. Ubuntu's menu system is more simple and I find more functional.
First impressions are that openSUSE will be fine once I adjust to it. I must admit - I much prefer the green themes that openSUSE uses as compared to the nauseating oranges and browns that Ubuntu has traditionally gone for!
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