cp /dev/drillpress /dev/sda1

Posted on 2010-02-18 by M. Eric Carr

Paleotech Formatting. When it absolutely, positively has to be made unrecoverable…

A hard drive used by one of our financial gurus at work died. A recovery service was able to get most or all of the data out, and I was asked to handle the warranty claim for a new hard drive. We had purchased the “no-HD-return” option on the warranty, and Dell did a nice job getting us a good replacement drive the next day — but we still needed to make sure the old drive couldn’t be read by nefarious evildoers (should they decide to go Dumpster-diving and have a cleanroom).

I vaguely remembered reading that one suggested Best Practice for such a situation involved a drill press — which we just so happened to have available in the lab.

I dare say the data has done left the building.

Posted in Drexel, Humor, System Administration | 1 Comment

Prius cruise control problems?

Posted on 2010-02-11 by M. Eric Carr

As an embedded enthusiast, I’ll admit I’ve been a little skeptical about the recent complaints about spontaneous acceleration problems on the Toyota Prius. I don’t have one myself (can’t afford anything that new yet), but I’ve been impressed by the ideas behind the design. The “spontaneous acceleration” complaints sounded to me more like either people’s imagination running away with them, people who don’t understand their cars and/or can’t drive, or people looking for a quick buck or cheap publicity out of all of this.

This changes my opinion. If Steve Wozniak, who owns a Prius, says that he’s experienced problems with the cruise control system causing uncommanded acceleration, I believe him. This guy designed the original Apple computer system way back when, and truly understands digital electronics. He also has nothing to gain from badmouthing Toyota, and being a typical engineer, has never been one to look for publicity (unlike that “other” Steve.) He’s just an engineer who noticed an important problem and is trying to help get it solved. (Good for you, Woz.)

I hope Toyota is taking these reports seriously, and comes up with a good, solid fix for them. Were it me, I would suggest a paleo-tech solution: Install a hardwired killswitch which cuts power to the electric propulsion and forces the transmission into Neutral. (The engine *does* already have an RPM defenser, yes?)

Hopefully Toyota can solve the problem and get this behind them. They have done a lot to popularize hybrid cars (and fuel efficiency in general); I would hate for such a good idea to get more bad press just because of some engineering glitches which should have been caught long ago.

Posted in Current Events, Digital Citizenship | Leave a comment

Digital Is Better Than Analog. God Said So!

Posted on 2010-01-30 by M. Eric Carr

It’s true. God (at least the Christian one, as Jesus) said so Himself:

“But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.”
(Matthew 5:37, King James Version)

Posted in Digital, Humor | 1 Comment

Directory Size Management

Posted on 2010-01-23 by M. Eric Carr

I’m in the process of organizing and backing up the rather large directory structure on my desktop box, in preparation to try out Windows 7 and Ubuntu Linux.

Until I finally buy a BD-R drive (which will probably happen sometime this year), this means backing up to DVD-R discs. My mail spool is no problem at 2.3GB or thereabouts, but the \docs directory is another story entirely. There is content in there — probably large, unused content — from at least as far back as the first Clinton administration. I don’t mind keeping old data around if it’s reasonably sized, but how to tell where the disk-hogging directories are?

Googling “directory tree size,” I came across WinDirStat. It’s a freeware application to scan a given directory structure and show how much is taken up by which subdirectories.

It also takes this data and maps it into pretty fractal pictures.

I’ll post my thoughts on Ubuntu and Windows 7 when I get to them. I may even try out the 64-bit version of XP, depending on how much I like or dislike Win7. (With 64-bit support and newer versions of DirectX, I *want* to like it — but I have concerns about the way the GUI has been evolving since Office 2007 and Vista.)

Posted in System Administration | 6 Comments