Weblog on the Internet and public policy, journalism, virtual community, and more from David Brake, a Canadian academic, consultant and journalist

Archive forMay 17th, 2003 | back to home

17 May 2003
Filed under:problems with technology,Spam at10:53 pm

whatsthis.jpg

This popped up on my screen this afternoon. And something like it popped up a few months back. I just downloaded and ran AdAware 6 to see if some spyware could be to blame but didn’t find anything.

Later Thanks to the timely intervention of Simon Forrest I found out this problem is due to an obscure feature built into Windows NT, 2000 and XP for network admins to use to warn of network shutdowns and the like, and thanks to “Res the Sorceror” I found out how to fix the problem:

“Go to control panel. Double-click on Administrative Tools select Services, scroll down to Messenger, go to properties, change Auto to Disabled.”

So if this has happened to you that’s how to fix it. Hope this helps!movies squirtnude movie sceneslesbian big movieerotic moviesclips movie hentaistriptease moviesmovies bestialityfree animal movies sex Map

Filed under:Current Affairs (World) at4:07 pm

The Economist this week speaks approvingly of the US Army’s rather unorthodox way of paying unpaid Iraqi workers in Kirkuk. Reportedly, they “drilled a hole in the roof of a bank vault, retrieving around half a million dollars’ worth of Iraqi dinars.” And who were the first to get paid? The 9,000 workers of the North Oil Company – followed, admittedly, by teachers then health care workers…

Filed under:Open source,Personal at12:31 am

I downloaded the SuSe 8.2 “experience” CD and it installed without any problem at all. But I didn’t want to be stuck booting from a CD ROM every time I wanted to mess about with Linux (and I don’t know what they left off the “experience”). So I downloaded every file in SuSe’s 8.2 download directory onto my hard disc, created a boot CD from the boot.iso image in the /boot directory and tried to install from the HD with the files onto a new blank HD. And hit a brick wall.

Soon I was on IRC in the #suse channel trying to sort it out and though they were very helpful there (thanks localhorst and cz^thc!) they couldn’t figure out my problem either. And I quickly descended into the hell of trial and error and typing things like “mount -t vfat /dev/hdb1 /mnt” (!)

So I’m giving up again – unless someone who lives relatively nearby would care to have a try at sorting me out either using the stuff I have downloaded or (chance would be a fine thing!) using the pukka 8.2 install CDs.

Failing that, I will have to drag my desktop into town for the next meeting of the Greater London Linux Users Group.

Admittedly my installation is just a tiny bit outside the usual (not having the CDs) but if SuSe is going to make its new Linux downloadable why not do so by just providing the .iso files for all the install CDs instead of providing every last file and expecting the poor user to figure out how to do an installation for themselves?

Anyway, this agony has dulled some of my early enthusiasm for Linux for the desktop I can tell you!