“Diversification 101″.
According to Robert Heinlein,
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
Thanks to Dad for the quote, sent to me many years ago.
I created a Xen guest (virtual machine) containing a minimal Fedora Core 6 install. The install was so minimal, in fact, that I didn’t have many of my usual tools and toys. This presented a problem when I tried to use yum to upgrade the system: yum wasn’t there.
(more…)
A coworker asked me for some help with a vexing computer problem. “Would you try this digital camera on your computer?” she asked in desperation. It looked like a cheap digital camera–a Nikon CoolPix or something–one that would probably require a special driver, black magic, and lots of cursing. “Sure”, I was game. I plugged it into a Windows XP laptop expecting the familiar “new USB device detected” wizard, but it didn’t pop up. Nothing did. Meh!?
Out of pure sport, I decided to try the camera on a Fedora Core 6 laptop. I noticed the hard drive activity light flickering, then in a second or two a window popped up to let me know that a camera had been plugged in and would I like to download some photos?
Well yes, in fact, I would!
What, no recompiling the kernel? No surfing message board flamewars for secret modprobe arguments? No trolling mailing lists until I find the right Hungarian genius kid that can lead me to camera nirvana? What is the world coming to?
That, and utterly useless but completely irresistible desktop effects!