Anyone can do a Diet Coke and Mentos movie. But not everyone can do it as well as these guys. If you liked Experiment #137, you’ll love this one.
Like Revver, Google is sharing some of the advert revenue with these artists, so if you are amused by what you see, you can help them out by visiting any sponsors who catch your interest.
The little, curved, shiny things are “hard drive magnets”, a metal bracket with Neodynium magnets attached. They are the strong, rare-earth permanent magnets that form half of the motor that moves the read-write head quickly across the surface of a hard disk platter. They are so powerful in fact, if you stick the flat ones to your fridge you’ll need to pry them off with a screwdriver. Most computer enthusiasts look at a picture like this and conclude right away that the data on that drive is toast.
There’s this old myth you can mess up or even erase the data on your hard drive by placing a whole bunch of fridge magnets on the outside of your case. To test this myth, I thought I might go one step further and cover a hard drive with really strong magnets to see what would happen. It seems sort of fitting that the strongest magnets I have are also the very magnets that make a hard drive work. I left them on for a day and a half.
The result? The data on the drive above was accessible after I pulled all the magnets off.
Since the drive pictured above was a little dodgy to begin with, I tried the procedure a second time with a different, known-good hard drive. As with the first one, there was no damage to the data at all. Not only did the second drive pass a CHKDSK, MD5SUMs of three ISO images on it were the same both before and after a sixteen hour period of being covered.
It would seem that hard drives are not as susceptible to magnetic fields as people think they are. This makes sense when you think about it a bit. Those powerful hard drive magnets are normally found inside a hard drive less than 2cm from the platters. Hard drives wouldn’t work at all if these magnets could erase the surface just by being close by.
The scientific reason why my ghetto drive erasing system doesn’t work is because for all their apparent magnetic power, the rare-earth hard drive magnets are simply not powerful enough to affect the particles on the hard drive platter when sitting on top of its cover. The coercivity of the magnetic material on a hard drive platter is very high, around two thousand Oersteds, and even though rare-earth magnets can have five times that level of coercivity, mine aren’t nearly so strong. Since there is a bit of space between the drive’s top cover and the surface of the platter, the affect of their magnetic field is even less. I could have a hundred of them piled on for a week and it wouldn’t make any difference.
So is it possible to mess up the data on a hard drive with permanent magnets? Sure, but not with the little ones you tend to find just lying around. Certainly not with fridge magnets. A big rare-earth one would probably do the trick, just as a bulk electromagnetic media degausser would. If you really, permanently want to wipe your hard drive, you could always check out the GuardDog prototype. It not only erases a drive using a strong magnet, it destroys it.
A little while ago I sent a letter to the Honourable Gary Schellenberger, my member of parliament, urging care in the process of upgrading the Copyright Act. He’s chair of the Standing Committe on Canadian Heritage, so I figured if he read it he might tell other caucus members too.
Well, he did. He forwarded the mail to the Minister of Industry, one of the ministers involved with the committee (I guess). I figured that would be the end of it, but apparently not. The Honourable Maxime Bernier has sent an email to me today, seemingly indicating the letter has been read and understood.
To: Mr. Robert J. Young
(cobolhacker@gmail.com)Dear Mr. Young:
Your Member of Parliament, Mr. Gary Schellenberger, forwarded to me on September 15, 2006, a copy of your electronic correspondence of September 6, 2006, conveying your concerns about possible amendments to the Copyright Act.
In my view, the Act must continue to be supportive of innovation and research while reflecting current technological and legal realities. To this end, a balance between adequate protection for copyright holders and reasonable access to copyrighted material is critical.
With this in mind, I am working closely with my colleague, the Honourable Bev Oda, Minister of Canadian Heritage, to determine the appropriate next steps with respect to copyright reform.
Please be assured that your comments will be taken into account as we move forward.
Sincerely,
Maxime Bernierc.c. Mr. Gary Schellenberger, M.P.
Although I’m fairly certain I’ve reached the end here, I have to respond. It is the polite thing to do.
The Honourable Mr. Bernier,
Dear Sir,
I have no doubt your position keeps you very busy, so I must thank you for taking the time to read the letter forwarded to you by the Hon. Mr. Schellenberger. It is a pleasure to have this opportunity to assist you, in whatever small way, in the important process of Copyright reform.
I agree that a balance needs to be found. In my mind, such a balance should seek to enable creativity and community, while at the same time offering the content creator incentives, both financial and spiritual, to continue the creation of works of art and knowledge, especially derivative ones.
This productive correspondence doesn’t have to end. Should you, the Hon. Mr. Schellenberger, or any member of the committee have more spare minutes and would like to know more of what I know, I would be more than happy to write to you again, or perhaps meet with you and discuss the issue in person.
Name the time and place and I’ll be there.
Sincerely,
Robert J. Young, of Stratford, Ontario
Yet another machine comes into the office all messed up with viruses and spyware. Well, so what else is new?
The bugs die pretty easily, but while debugging the poor compy I notice that the graphics are really doggy, which might be part of the reason why the customer thinks the machine is slow. A quick look in the Device Manager reveals there is no display driver, but at the same time there is no “VGA adapter” listing in the unknown devices section either. Now that’s a bit odd.
Hardware detection reveals nothing. Adding a different VGA card doesn’t work. I don’t find it hiding in the ENUM part of the registry. It’s like this machine is convinced that it doesn’t have a graphics card. Stupid Windows.
In the Display applet selecting Settings->Advanced->Adapter reveals that we are using something called “vgasave” for a graphics driver. In the Device Manager you can also find it by selecting View then checking “Show Hidden Devices”. When you look down the list of Non-Plug and Play Drivers, you’ll see it. It’s the default VGA driver Windows puts in when it has no proper driver for the graphics adapter. For a reason I’ll probably never know, this system has convinced itself that the slow and featureless vgasave driver is the correct one.
Naturally, this is about where my moment of enlightenment ends. I try a dozen different things to try to get Windows to detect the “real” graphics card, but it reverts to vgasave every time. So in my incredible wisdom, I decide to disable it. “Yeah, that will force it to detect the proper adapter”, I think to myself.
This turns out to be something of a dumb move. When I reboot the system all I get is a blank screen. No detection, no vgasave, no VGA at all. The hard drive chatters away and I can hear sounds from the soundcard. When I push the button on the front it makes that happy little noise and shuts itself off. Well, disabling the video driver is what I told it to do. Stupid me.
There is a way to for people in my situation to turn vgasave back on. Using a Windows installation CD you can boot to the recovery console and unless the owner has changed the administrator password on you, you can log into Windows and give it the following command:
enable vgasave SERVICE_SYSTEM_START
When executed, it will tell you that the driver is now enabled. So I do this and reboot. But still no dice. Still no picture. I try it a couple more times before I give up on it. Stupid Windows.
Okay. I’ll do a repair install. This often fixes messed up settings like this and it doesn’t erase any data. I should’ve just done it from the start and saved myself a bunch of time.
So I start the repair install. The first half of the install proceeds along normally but after the first reboot Windows shows me who the bitch really is. The second half of the install begins alright, but with no picture. OMFG, it has no graphics! It’s going to do the second half of this install with no fucking graphics because I told it to! The hard drive merrily chatters away, installing an invisible operating system for me. It eventually stops, probably waiting for me to hit a Next button, or type a product code into little boxes I can’t see. I turn the computer off. What a stupid, messed up, fucking useless bunch of code Windows is! God, do I hate it some days!
I call the customer up and tell him what’s been going on and tell him the only way is going to be a full re-install. I ask him what kind of data files he wants saved. He tells me that he’s cool with a re-install and they have no data to be saved. Sweet. At least now I can do an quick flush-install and put this whole vgasave debacle behind me. He offers to bring by his Windows disc, but I tell him that it’s not needed, as we have the discs and your licence sticker is stuck to the port side of your case.
Partway through the flush-install I gently turn the machine around to have a better look at the product code on the license sticker. Like all Microsoft software, you must enter this unique 25 digit number to complete an install. Without it, no Windows.
When I do get the system turned around I immediately recognise another problem, one even more annoying than vgasave. I close my eyes, sigh and try to fight off the rage.
The sticker is ripped in half. I only have 10 of the 25 digits.
FOR FUCKSAKES!!! Okay, I give up. Time to go to the pub.
This is a nVidia GeForce 7950 GX2 graphics card.
It has two GPUs on two PCBs and takes up two slots on your mainboard. It has one gigabyte of memory. And if you feel like spending even more money you can get a second one to make yourself an SLI, two gigabyte, quad-GPU über card.
Stratford is a small town and while there are plenty of gamers around, there just aren’t all that many who have $700 to drop on a single graphics card. So when I get to build a system around one of these I get excited and take pictures. Y’know, to help you imagine what it would be like have something awesome like this in your own computer. To help me imagine, too. I can’t afford stuff like this. But you just know I’m going to have to test it…
There are those who game and those who game well.
The core of the system. The CPU is an Intel Core 2 Duo E6600. SLI wasn’t asked for, but with a graphics card like this why would you bother?
The pair of heatsink fans are whisper quiet at the idle and not all that much louder under load. A warm draft comes off them at all times.
People have been fired for blogging before. But I can’t think of any politician who has been shown the door because of his blog.
Not exactly fired in the vocational sense, Garth Turner was kicked out of the Conservative Party of Canada because he was publicly critical of some of his party’s policies on his weblog. Keep in mind that he was a Tory backbencher, and not a Cabinet minister or anyone in a position of serious influence. Now he’s an independent member.
He’s an MLA who maintains a blog so his constituents can learn about what he does and why he does it. This is exactly the right reason to blog. The current government doesn’t get it.
Before his site really slowed down under the strain caused by the curious (me) and the well wishers (also me), I managed to read through a bunch of his stuff and I am really mystified why they canned him. His writing is clear, concise, personal and entertaining — quality bloggage, all in all. As best as I can tell, his criticisms of the Conservative platform and the government are quite measured and not disrespectful in any particular way.
I respect Turner for saying what he thinks, especially in a world increasingly full of public officials who are unwilling to say something, anything about what they believe for fear of offending someone. Turner offended some people and paid for it I guess, but if it were me, I would rather piss off The Man than think of myself as a pussy for the rest of my days.
So yay! A first for Canada! The first politician shitcanned for his weblog. I guess our current government has convinced itself that it’s okay to punish one of its own for writing down what he actually thinks, even if it is not exactly “the party line”.
So, is this the kind of government you want running your country for you?
Ok. Here’s the best, most cynical post about American life ever. Poster Catbeller offers a scathing comment about a particularly sad story on Slashdot:
And after they’re eighteen, they can pass through the body scanners, look into retinal pattern id readers, submit to body cavity searches, submit to endless background checks, drug checks, be pushed into first amendment zones, get checked on secret “terrorist” watch lists, have their email and IM’s read, have their mail opened, packages scanned, DNA data catalogued, car monitored by GPS tracking devices, their phones tracked every second of their lives and by extention their own movements monitored until they die.
Sweet freedom! And that’s just the people who haven’t done everything. Get convicted of something and you are a prisoner for the rest of your life, if not in bricks then in opportunities.
And WHAT ARE THE ODDS of a terrorist attack hitting anyone? What are the odds of being killed by your car? Why aren’t cars illegal, then? Why aren’t there driver terror lists? Alchohol watch lists? Oh, why go on.
We’ve given up what it means to be free because we’re terrorized cowards incapable of rational risk analysis. No sense of human rights, no idea of history not promulated by Fox News or equivalent.
So, what’s a kid gonna look forward to after they release him from the school prison but the bigger prison that we all are sharing (unless we’re rich — whole different world for them, always).
Wow. If all Americans are really like this then they are seriously doomed.
I need a new cell phone.
Since I’m a Bell Mobility customer, I head to the mall to visit the local Bell World outlet to get a new one. Here I can pick out a model and have it activated, all in one easy step. Like most cellular companies, Bell Mobility practically gives away the phones in return for you signing on for another year or two.
“Meh,” I tell the salesperson, “I’ve got no problems with the service. I’ll do another contract.” In Canada, one cell phone company is more or less the same as the others so it hardly matters which one you’re beholden to. Really they all cost the same, so unless you are somehow out of favour with your current provider switching is mostly pointless.
The actual selection of the hardware takes less than ten minutes. It’s their curious configuration process that really wastes my time for me.
The problem with a Bell World store is that it is not actually a division of Bell Canada, it is an independently owned franchise. When actual phone company stuff needs to get done, the sales clerk has to fiddle with a special website and call a special hotline to speak to a proper Bell Canada person. Essentially they have to call customer support, just like I do. So you can imagine what happens.
“Ahh jeez. I’m on hold.”
Well there’s a big surprise. Customer service is all about keeping people on hold so maybe they will hang up or something. Of course he can’t hang up because this is the only way to transfer services from my old phone to the new one.
I amuse myself by milling aimlessly around their store. Cell phones here, satellite TV there, and various bits of high speed Internet stuff scattered throughout. They’ve got this Blackberry display smack in the middle of the cellphones: “Stay connected!” Yeah right. I hate those things. The people I see using them are like zombie slaves. If I ever had a boss tell me that I needed to get one I would tell him to fuck off and offer to shove the device up his ass for him.
It’s not a very big store when you get right down to it. One mid-size retail showcase area up front with two sales kiosks and two little rooms at the back full of stock. I’ll bet they’re paying over two grand a month for it all, too.
Eventually the sales clerk gets through to the ‘real’ Bell Canada person and they mumble a bit of jibberish at each other before he says to me, “I don’t know why, but your current cell phone plan is not supported on this phone.” There’s no technical reason why, of course, the reason is purely financial. Those assclowns at Bell want to migrate me to a more profitable plan.
“So what plan were you on before?” he asks.
I just look at him. “Huh?” I have no idea what plan I’m on. The Bent Over with Free Reach Around Plan for all I know. I spend most of my days trying to solve other people’s problems; I have no time for my own. I don’t want to expend any brainpower at all on maximizing my cell phone plan. The idea of the cell phone calling plan a purely synthetic, profit-driven bullshit thing anyway. The only plan I should be on is the ‘I make all phone calls I want whenever I want and you charge me a little as possible’ plan. But that’s just not how it works with cell phones.
“We can get you into this 100 daytime minutes with 1000 weekend and evening minutes plan.”
Whatever. Sure. I have no idea what I had before. But I’m pretty sure I don’t talk on my cell phone for more than 100 minutes a month anyway. I long ago learned that it is cheaper and easier to do on-site vendor support calls on the customer’s land line.
“Do you need call display?”
“Well yeah. Isn’t that included? How could that not be included? How do I get it?” I’m not sure why I even bothered to ask. I know exactly how I’m going to get it.
“We can add a $10 ‘Fuel’ option. It’s comes with 50 free text messages a month, too.”
I never use them. Whatever. Sure. As long as the bill is less than $70 a month. The salesperson is as helpful as he can be, given the shit product that he has to sell. I don’t blame him particularly. In fact, his task of educating customers about the ins and outs of cell phone plans reminds me somewhat of informing customers about the ins and outs of key codes, product activation, Genuine Advantage, Digital Rights Management and all the rest of the greedy, useless shit that suits have foisted on the computer industry.
All of this generates a fair bit of paperwork. Real paperwork on real paper and such like. There is much signing of legally binding documents I don’t bother to read. Even if I did have a problem there’s nothing I can do. Sign ‘em, or no cell phone for you.
The ponderous nature of the Bell Canada Way becomes even more evident when I go to actually pay for the phone. The sales clerk looks at me, leafs through the pile of sheets, enters a bit of it in to the computer and asks for payment. I do up the credit card. Then she enters some stuff on the computer, then some more stuff, and then even more stuff, looks stunned for a minute or two before finally remarking that there seems to be not enough paperwork. Then she looks at me funny, as if to ask for guidance.
Why are you looking at me? I have no goddamn idea what you are doing. And oh yeah, my stuff that I have now paid for is still behind the counter. I wish to take it away now so I can play with it.
“I dunno. Your internal procedures are a great mystery to me.” I think that I am so funny, but she actually has to track down the original sales-guy to get him to print out something more so she can complete the transaction. After a bunch of running around I finally get to leave with my new cell phone.
35 minutes it takes me to get a new cell phone. The Bell Canada way is definitely not the quick way.
Curious but never watched? You’ll need to see the first two seasons to really grok it all, but the Battlestar Wiki might help.
Which side are we on? We’re on the side of the demons, Chief. We’re evil men in the gardens of paradise…sent by the forces of death to spread devastation and destruction wherever we go. I’m surprised you didn’t know that.
The opening of the third season of the new Battlestar Galactica finds most of the remains of humanity subjugated on New Caprica under the Baltar Regime, itself a puppet government of the Cylons. But these terrible words are not those of a Cylon or a human collaborator, but of Colonel Tigh, the leader of the resistance.
The best show on television is back, and it’s darker than ever. I made some predictions a while ago about the third season, but after only two episodes the show has already gone way deeper than I could have imagined.
The Cylons Will Be Nice, but only to a point.
They apparently were not too bad at first, but by the time we get to the Webisodes the resistance is starting to arm itself and the Cylons are starting to turn the screws.
It is this very crackdown that takes the resistance to a higher level. The brutal Cylon attack at the human temple kills Duck’s girlfriend, the only thing on New Caprica he lived for. Despondent, he straps on a pile of explosives and blows himself up at the New Caprica Police graduation ceremony, killing many Cylons and human collaborators. His suicide bombing is the first of the campaign and it doesn’t take many more before the Cylon leaders order mass executions of suspected insurgents (yes, I believe they even use that term!)
The third season has so far presented the Cylons as indisputably evil, in contrast to the previous two. Many of the stories involving Cylons from the first two seasons seem intended to incite pity for them (eg. Flesh and Bone, Pegasus, any story with Helo and Sharon). But not this season. The Cavil model in particular, is so corrupt and so cruel you want somebody to put a bullet in his head over and over again. Only a handful of Sixes and Eights are appalled enough by their people’s treatment of humanity to speak up about it.
Anders and Starbuck Will Lead The Resistance
Interestingly, it is Tigh who leads the resistance with Tyrol and Anders serving as his lieutenants. Missing an eye, he’s dirty, haggard, angry and sober — and he’s ready to kill. The brutality of his tactics at times shocks even Tyrol, though Tryol himself has no particular problems at all with killing Cylons and has some choice words for Jammer about what he thinks should happen to the human collaborators:
You know, when this is all over, guys like Gaeta are going to get strung up. And guys like you and me… we’re going to be there, tying the knots, making them tight.
Of course he doesn’t realise that Jammer is a collaborator too, but desparately wants to get out. Even Gaeta wishes he were somewhere else.
Leoben Seeks Starbuck
I figured that Leoben had come back for Starbuck. I said:
Inspired by her mercy in Flesh and Bone (admittedly after having tortured him for a while), a resurrected Leoben believes he has found true love. Not realising that she has married, he has come to New Caprica to ask her to come away with him so they might be together and have children.
He keeps Starbuck locked up in his apartment while she gets used to the idea of them being together.
But it’s even weirder than that. One day he shows up with a little girl in tow and tells Starbuck he has already had a child with her, and has returned to New Caprica so the three of them might live together as a family.
In the second season episode The Farm, Starbuck is captured by the Cylons on Caprica and wakes up in detention missing an ovary. Leoben salvaged the organ from The Farm and used an egg from it to create a daughter for them. Or at least, that’s what he says. Either way, this little side story is a real mindjob.
Baltar Will Be Kicked Out of Office
He’s not out yet, but he’s certainly being shown his hat. He’s made to sign illegal execution orders with one of the Dorals screaming at him holding a gun to his head. Even Zerek, held in detention for months by the Cylons, wishes Laura Roslin had managed to steal the election. He says this as the two of them are about to be killed in accordance with that execution order.
Helo Will Move On
I was completely wrong about this one. Helo not only stuck with Sharon, he married her! When Admiral Adama recommissions her as an officer he refers to her as Lieutenant Sharon Agathon. Then he sends her on a mission to save the rest of humanity on New Caprica. Now how’s that for trust!
Cally Will Continue to Suffer
There is no doubt in my mind that Cally will continue to suffer all throughout the third season, though now I’m not sure how. But I’m pretty certain she’s going to escape execution. They’re going to save her because actress Nicki Clyne somehow makes the silliest dialog seem so sincere:
Then frak you, Sharon, you stupid fraked up toaster. How many times do I have to shoot you, anyway? If you can’t help me then go away and leave us the frak alone!
As with a lot of things involving the new Battlestar Galactica, you just have to watch it.
A guy I know comes into the shop with box. I quietly sigh. This is going to be one of those encounters.
It takes this fellow a paragraph to say what normal folk say in a sentence. Why I finally get the conversation moving in a coherent direction I discover there is a mainboard inside the box. No ESD bag, or anything, just a mainboard with no accessories.
This guy is always trying to sell me stuff. Shitty stuff. Shitty, smoky smelling stuff. I can’t believe he’s that desperate for the 20 bucks I’m going to give him if the thing actually works. OK, maybe I can.
One of the drawbacks to running a shop downtown is that all the kooks hang around downtown too. I should tell him to piss off, but I’m in the service business and customer contact is our bread and butter. And I’ve occasionally got passable stuff off of him and this board could be useful to me. I tell him to leave it with me and I take down his number, give him my card and tell him to call back in a few days.
So I’ve got this MPGA-462 2.0GHz Pentium 4 CPU lying around. I know it works because I was using it on a different board a few weeks ago. This CPU will work on the candidate mainboard and would complete a decent used P4 system I could sell to make a quick $250.
If the mainboard works, that is.
Back in the 486 days it was easier to pizzabox a system, I swear.
I clean the board. I put the processor on the board and lock it down. I carefully put thermal gunk on the processor. I drop on the heatsink, this massive, nasty stock Intel job that must weigh at least a pound. For some reason it doesn’t want to go on willingly and I fiddle with those little damn hooks to get them lined up with the latches on the mainboard’s bracket for a good ten minutes. I finally get it lined up and twist the two levers to lock it down. 256MB of known-good used DDR-333 RAM is plugged in.
I carefully put the whole affair on a small cardboard box. You do this to leave space for the flange on the graphics card. It’s an old AGP card but works for well enough to complete a CPU stress test.
Finally, I hook up Grond, our trusty bench ATX-12 power supply unit. Now we are ready to rock. I turn on Grond and the standby power LED near the bottom of the board comes on. I short the PWR-SW jumper with my screwdriver. The CPU fan start to spin.
But nothing appears on the screen.
Yeah.
Oh I try different RAM, a different graphics card, etc… but as soon as the used Celeron 1.7 CPU comes into view I tell myself to stop. Not for 20 dollars of used stuff. The crappy, stinky board is very likely dead and I shouldn’t waste any more time on it. Probably shouldn’t have in the first place. I carefully dismantle the whole rig and put the board back out front.
Shit.
That’s 30 minutes wasted for nothing.
Powered by WordPress