Category Archives: Sufficiently Advanced Technology

How Did You Spend Your Vacation?

Posted on September 4, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

Monday was Labor Day, a federal holiday in these United States, making a three-day weekend.

I spent quite a lot of it looking at a computer that kept saying this:

We're sorry; the installer crashed. Please file a new bug report at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+filebug (do not attach your details to any existing bug) and a developer will attend to the problem as soon as possible. To help the developers understand what went wrong, include the following detail in your bug report, and attach the files /var/log/syslog and /var/log/partman:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity”, line 210, in
main()
File “/usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity”, line 205, in main
install(args[0])
File “/usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity”, line 58, in install
ret = wizard.run()
File “/usr/lib/ubiquity/ubiquity/frontend/gtkui.py”, line 358, in run
File “/usr/lib/ubiquity/ubiquity/frontend/gtkui.py”, line 989, in process_step
File “/usr/lib/ubiquity/ubiquity/frontend/gtkui.py”, line 743, in progress_loop
RuntimeError: Install failed with exit code 139; see /var/log/syslog

Mind you, I was doing something that may be fairly silly:

  • take a moderately ancient machine with a tiny ISA drive with Windows on it,
  • shove a low-budget SATA card into it, a Rosewill RC-209
  • ignore the fact that the BIOS will see the drive but won't offer to boot from it
  • leave Windows XP on the ISA drive
  • install a massive (half-terrabyte!) drive on the SATA card
  • partition the drive to give Windows a little more room to play
  • install Ubuntu to the bulk of the SATA drive.

It was the last step that kept croaking. Even thought the CD I burned passed all integrity checks.

So I filed a bug report. Currently, I'm downloading the alternate Ubuntu installer, and doing a full scan of the (brand new) disk's integrity in case it has some physical fault. Takes a long time to scan half a terrabyte.

Earlier, a similar install using the same model card and a similar SATA disk alone on a similar computer (without the attempt to dual boot on two drives) went swimmingly.

But this one would croak even if I unplugged the ISA drive with windows on it. So There's Something Funny Going On….

Update: disk checks out fine.

Meanwhile, thanks to the Super Grub Disk I managed to rescue Windows from a non-functioning entry I'd put into the MBR. Three cheers for the Super Grub Disk! I'm now back to where I was 40 hours ago!

(Lest anyone feel too sorry for me, this isn't my main machine, and I actually like solving problems like this, even (especially?) if I caused them.)

Posted in Software, Sufficiently Advanced Technology | 8 Comments

IF

Posted on August 28, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

If I had a TV, I might have a satellite dish (or cable, I have no idea which is worse).

If I had a satellite dish, I'd definitely want to use the Satellite Alignment Calculator 2.0 to aim it.

Posted in Sufficiently Advanced Technology | 6 Comments

One Laptop Per Child Review

Posted on August 14, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

Freedom to Tinker has the perfect One Laptop Per Child Review — written by a 12-year-old. He likes it a lot, but identifies a couple of issues.

Posted in Sufficiently Advanced Technology | 1 Comment

Cool Travel Phone (But You Can’t Have One)

Posted on August 2, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

This Spice D-80 Dual Mode Handset looks like a cool GSM phone for traveling with both a domestic and a foreign SIM. Pity it's not a flip phone…and that it's only going to be sold in India.

I think US carriers will be forced to unlock all their phones and accept some competition…eventually. Maybe some day they'll even start selling phones like this. (But in the long run we are all dead.)

Posted in Sufficiently Advanced Technology | 4 Comments

Phone Frenzies

Posted on June 30, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

We were driving in downtown Coral Gables last night a bit before seven pm, when we saw something very unusual: a long line of people queuing on the sidewalk. Understand that people just don't stand around much outdoors in South Florida in late June. It's too hot. And yet, here was a line halfway down the block, curving around to something we could not see. A book signing? Supermodels? Miami Dolphins? No. After we turned the corner, all was revealed: The AT&T/Cingular store. I'm guessing a horde of folks came by after work to buy an iPhone and were still there an hour or two later. (The looked too fresh to have been there all day.) When I came back around 8:30 pm there were still over a dozen people in the queue. Amazing.

More to my taste is this feature from AnandTech, Apple's iPhone Dissected: We did it, so you don't have to. Not that there's anything terribly surprising in there…

Posted in Sufficiently Advanced Technology | 3 Comments

The Real Problem with USB Flash Drives

Posted on May 14, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

Someone should write about the REAL problem with flash drives: they break too easily at the connection between the usb male plug and the body of the drive. The otherwise wonderful Flash Voyager is by far the most vulnerable I've encountered, but many others share the same Achilles Heel too.

Reviewers always seem to write about running a car over the drive. That mean putting pressure on the case. This isn't, in my experience, a common real-life scenario. In contrast, the real-life damage case is torque when your laptop bumps into something with that drive sticking out. It snaps easily. And no one ever talks about that.

The best drives I've had for performance (I want to be able to copy lots of small files quickly; reported tests usually concentrate on large file transfer, so my preferences may not be your preferences) were also the most delicate at that critical point: the Corsair Flash Voyagers. I've broken two. Second-fastest, the OCZ Rally2, were not as fragile, but were not exactly tough either. I bent one. It still works, but I don't trust it.

I've currently moved to a Cruzer Titanium, which not only looks a bit stronger, but has a nice retractable head so I don't have to worry about losing the little cap. The performance is good, although I don't think it is quite as good as the other two.

Unfortunately, the Cruzer came with the dreaded U3 software. I used the control panel to disable it, but haven't had the heart to delete it on the theory that this might be irrevocable (online opinions vary), and anyway it didn't take much space. But I may delete it soon, as it seems my Asus motherboard absolutely won't boot up with the drive plugged in, even though the BIOS is set to boot from the hard drive first.

Posted in Shopping, Sufficiently Advanced Technology | 4 Comments