Archive for September, 2005
September 30, 2005 at 9:48 am · Filed under General
Back in 1998, at eGroups, the founders were keen on these removable hard drive trays that were inexpensive. They were also prone to failure since they were so cheap. This effectively made them useless.
With SATA here, and USB 2.0, and firewire… are there any good solutions to this problem yet? Unfortunately, most consumers don’t ever consider the need to just pull a drive and move it to another machine. (This is also probably due to the failure of current operating systems to support this easily.)
I have a box. It’s an older one that runs Win2k. I’m thinking of running a Linux on it, but I don’t want to lose the Win2k drive. I have multiple drives available, it would just be nice if it only required me to swap the drives with a simple: power off, pop drive out in tray, put new drive in, power on. I can do this right now with my 1U server that I have and it’s awesome.
I guess what I’m asking for is a standard. Can’t ALL the computer manufacturers get together and solve this issue?
September 27, 2005 at 8:42 pm · Filed under General
A lot of noise has been generated about Ruby on Rails over the last year, and it is only getting louder. I decided to check it out as well as the clones of it for PHP and Python. In fact there are now several cloning attempts for a bunch of languages. The interesting thing is that people are begining to change their minds about how to write software (not just for the web).
One thing I’m noticing out of this movement is the desire to get away from SQL… (Finally!) This is a good thing. In every framework that has been RoR, they all abstract the data as objects and hide the database. They don’t even replace it with XML mappings like the Java frameworks do.
Yes, this is a very, very good thing.
September 27, 2005 at 8:28 pm · Filed under General
This is an error I got when compiling some code I wrote. Can you guess what the issue is?
error C2440: 'initializing' : cannot convert from 'class std::_Tree,class std::allocator >,struct std::pair,class std::allocator > const ,class std::map,class std::allocator > >,struct std::map
,class std::allocator >,class std::map,class std::allocator >,struct std::less,class std::allocator >
,class std::allocator,class std::allocator > > >::Kfn,struct std::less,class std::allocator > >,class std::allocator,class std::allocator > > >::iterator’ to ‘class std::Tree,class std::
allocator >,struct std::pair,class std::allocator > const ,class std::map,class std::allocator >,class CBufferFunc,s
truct std::less,class std::allocator > >,class std::allocator > >,struct std::map,class std::allocator
,class std::map,class std::allocator >,class CBufferFunc,struct std::less,class std::allocator > >,class std::allocator >,struct std::less,class std::allocator > >,class std::allocator,class std::allocator >,class CBufferFunc,struct std::less,class std::allocator > >,class std::allocator > > >::_Kfn,struct std::less,class std::allocator > >,class std::allocator,class std::allocator >,class CBufferFunc,struct std::less,class std::allocator > >,class std::allocator > > >::iterator’
More for the answer:
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September 27, 2005 at 8:18 pm · Filed under General
I pre-ordered the latest Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, but my daughter and wife took priority in the reading order. It’s been at the house, but I didn’t have the inclination to pick it up and start. So, a couple of weeks ago when we went to the Redwood City library for Bookstock, I found myself sitting in the children’s section. I was just sitting there while the kids went book hunting. My daughter came over and picked up one of the available copies of HBP and handed it to me with an expectant look. So I started to read it there. Over the next couple of weeks, I would catch a few chapters before bed with the copy.
Overall, it felt like it was quick read, and not bad at all. There was definitely a different kind of tension. The humor was slightly different. I guess this is what is meant by the reviews of the book being ‘darker’. I just felt it was more serious. Also, the members of my family weren’t so happy about the ending, but wasn’t surprised by it.
Yeah, I would say its good.
September 27, 2005 at 7:51 pm · Filed under General
Well, I had a need to put a couple of computers on my network, without running wires to them. They were both in the same place so I tried my hand at using a Netgear WRT54G. Well, it worked fine for one computer, but the other had a problem. I eventually spent some time to resolve this, and without working on this too much discovered that it was probably a limitation with my Nokia Access Point. I don’t think the Nokia can handle multiple MAC addresses per wireless association.
So, I wanted to get this working and I decided that I would have to do the double NAT solution. In this configuration, I am using the WRT54G as a client of the Nokia, and it only gets one IP address. The computers behind the WRT54G exist on a separate network and get NAT’d to the main network, which is already being NAT’d.
Well, I tried the EWRT distro, and it just wouldn’t work. Then I tried the official Netgear software. Failure again. Then I tried another distro, which I don’t remember. All caused complications and required a few tense, scary hard-resets. So, I tried the Evil Sveasoft distro, the Final Alchemy to be specific.
Wow, those guys may be jerks, but this distro was the best one. It was working in no time and had more features accessable from the web admin over any other distro. It has been rock solid for weeks. Go grab the free copies over at the Individuals site.
(Shout out to SIC for lending me the WRT54G - Thanks!)
September 27, 2005 at 11:20 am · Filed under General
For about 2 months, I’ve had this issue where I couldn’t preview Adobe Acrobat PDF files in FireFox. Whenever I clicked on the link to a PDF, I would get a blank web page. Today it finally bugged me to the point of fixing it. I have come up with a list of items that may help you debug your issues. Before you start, have a web site handy that has a link to a PDF that you can test with.
Step 1. Go to about:config in the URL. Toggle plugin.exposefullpath to true.
Step 2. Go to about:plugins. Look for the Acrobat plugin, if it isn’t there, then stop and just go to this page to continue. It will tell you how to get the plugin installed.
Step 3. If the version of the Acrobat Reader plugin from Step 2 isn’t the same as your default Acrobat Reader. Go uninstall the old reader. (I didn’t have to do this, but it could happen.)
Step 4. Insure that all the mime types are enabled from Step 2. If they aren’t, go to your Tools > Options > Downloads > Plugins dialog and re-enable those mime types.
Step 5. Ok, if everything is correct (which was my case), and things still aren’t working, try this. It will clear up and then properly setup the necessary config.
Step 6. Shut down Firefox.
Step 7. Start up Adobe Acrobat Reader (I’m running 7.0.0 , or actually 7.0.3). Go into Edit > Preferences > Internet. Un-check Display in Browser.
Step 8. Start up Firefox and test the PDF view. In my case, it opened a separate Acrobat Reader application to view the PDF.
Step 9. Re-do Step 7, but this time turn on a Check in the Display in Browser checkbox.
Step 10. Re-do Step 8. You should now see PDF’s in your browser window again.
September 27, 2005 at 10:31 am · Filed under General
As I was driving into work today, I got off of 101 and was stopped at the light behind this older Civic hatchback. I noticed a big sticker on the back that said “AC Propulsion”. I thought it was just some sticker for a performance tweaker’s product loyalty. Then as I scanned lower to the car had a California DMV sticker on the bumper that said “Zero Emissions Vehicle”. Hmm.
After driving into work, I checked on the “AC Propulsion” sticker. The company makes components for electric cars. That car is either an electric one or it has some clever stickers. Regardless, it took off from the light and was way out in front of the other cars as it turned into the Google parking lot.
A kit for my car would cost $25,000.
September 26, 2005 at 4:22 pm · Filed under General
Here is an interesting presentation to check out.
I too have thought about Identity. It’s a big problem and it probably won’t get solved soon.
It will get solved, and it will be an interesting day when that happens. It probably won’t look like anything that people expected.
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