Todays xkcd...

4k Sector drives...

Here are some articles on new HD's with 4K sector size:
Linux Not Fully Prepared for 4096-Byte Sector Hard Drives
Linux and 4K disk sectors
Western Digital’s Advanced Format: The 4K Sector Transition Begins

Changing desktop background in Windows 7 Home Basic...

I thought Windows 7 starter was the version where you couldn't change the desktop background. Turns out the usual way of changing the desktop background is not present in Windows 7 Home Basic as well. If you right click on the desktop in Windows 7 Home Basic the option to personalize the appearance of the desktop is not present. However, unlike Windows 7 Starter you can change the desktop background, its just harder to get to then Windows 7 Home Premium.

According to this article, the way to change the desktop background is to go to the start menu and type "Change desktop background".

VIrtualbox 3.1.2 and Guest Windows 7 64bit

Windows 7 64bit running as a guest in a virtualbox will not have audio enabled. The problem is the lack of drivers for the audio options, and thanks to this thread the solution is to download the driver and install it yourself. Works for me.

Windows SDK installation

I needed to install windows 7 SDK on my machine. The installation works by downloading various pieces and installing them. Somewhere along the line, the download stalled. Its been that way for hours. Cancelling the installation brings up the dialog above asking me to wait while the operation completes. But that's the problem, the operation is stuck and won’t complete. Plus the dialog remains on top of all windows and won’t go away. Bad design.

Guide: Enable native NTFS Read/Write in Snow Leopard - Mac Forums

Guide: Enable native NTFS Read/Write in Snow Leopard - Mac Forums:

"I am sure many of you heard that Snow Leopard was supposed to have native read/write for NTFS partitions. Apple supported NTFS R/W in older SL builds but I guess decided to not to go with it for some reason, however support is still present.
For this, you need to modify your /etc/fstab file to mount NTFS partitions for read and write.

First, uninstall NTFS-3G/Paragon if installed.
Open Terminal.app (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal)
Type 'diskutil info /Volumes/volume_name' and copy the Volume UUID (bunch of numbers).
Backup /etc/fstab if you have it, shouldn't be there in a default install.
Type 'sudo nano /etc/fstab'.
Type in 'UUID=paste_the_uuid_here none ntfs rw' or 'LABEL=volume_name none ntfs rw' (if you don't have UUID for the disk).
Repeat for other NTFS partitions.
Save the file (ctrl-x then y) and restart your system.

After reboot, NTFS partitions should natively have read and write support. This works in both 32 and 64-bit kernels. Support is quite good and fast, it even recognizes file attributes such as hidden files."

This worked for me.

Groklaw - Microsoft Patents Sudo?!!

 

Lordy, lordy, lordy. They have no shame. It appears that Microsoft has just patented sudo, a personalized version of it.

Here it is, patent number7617530. Thanks, USPTO, for giving Microsoft, which is already a monopoly, a monopoly on something that's been in use since 1980 and wasn't invented by Microsoft. Here's Wikipedia's description of sudo, which you can meaningfully compare to Microsoft's description of its "invention".

Groklaw - Microsoft Patents Sudo?!!

KS2009: How Google uses Linux [LWN.net]

 

There may be no single organization which runs more Linux systems than Google. But the kernel development community knows little about how Google uses Linux and what sort of problems are encountered there. Google's Mike Waychison traveled to Tokyo to help shed some light on this situation; the result was an interesting view on what it takes to run Linux in this extremely demanding setting.

KS2009: How Google uses Linux [LWN.net]

If you're looking for the win7 usb download tool, as I was earlier today…

Microsoft has pulled an update tool for Windows 7 from the Microsoft Store site after a report indicating that the tool incorporated open-source code in a way that violated the GNU General Public License.

Did Microsoft Windows 7 download tool violate the GPL? | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com

Schneier on Security: Is Antivirus Dead?

 

Bottom line: antivirus software is neither necessary nor sufficient for security, but it's still a good idea. It's not a panacea that magically makes you safe, nor is it is obsolete in the face of current threats. As countermeasures go, it's cheap, it's easy, and it's effective. I haven't dumped my antivirus program, and I have no intention of doing so anytime soon.

Schneier on Security: Is Antivirus Dead?

Speaking of anti-virus, I've been using Microsoft Security Essentials since its release about a month or so ago, and its been working great so far.

Speaking UNIX: Peering into pipes

 

Pipe Viewer is one of those little-known gems that once you find it, you can't recall how you lived without it. You may find some applications of pv in your daily command-line use, but you are likely to find oodles of uses for it in your automation scripts. Rather than stare at a blinking cursor waiting patiently for some indication that all is well, you can now insert a probe to give you real-time feedback. Pipe Viewer adds a heartbeat to the soul of the machine.

Speaking UNIX: Peering into pipes

Hak5 episode - Metasploit 101 with Mubix

via Hak5

Testing...

New domain name... scriptingsysadmin.com
old one is dead...

Pixar Intro Parody

What happens after the lamp crushes the letter "i"?

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

GigaOm: Data Center in a briefcase

via gigaom

VirtualBox vs. Vmware

hak5

On waving...

 

The trouble is, everything you type into Wave is transmitted live, in real time—every keystroke was getting sent to Zach just as I hit it. This made me too self-conscious to get my thoughts across.

The Google Wave chatting tool is too complicated for its own good. - By Farhad Manjoo - Slate Magazine

 

I ran into the above problem and it really does throw one off when composing a reply. There used to be an indicator which showed if someone was online. A small green dot by the name in the contacts list. But its gone. Now you don't know if someone is online at the same time you are. If you start replying they could be looking at you type your reply. What if what you type isn't the message you wanted to get across? You can't take it back. They either need to enable the draft button, or at least get the indicator back.

Its early though, and they are trying out new ideas. I had no idea there was all this nomenclature other than wave itself:

You've even got to learn a new nomenclature: In Wave, messages are called waves, which are themselves composed of smaller elements called blips. There's also another class of message called pings, which are meant to be more urgent than waves—though once you're done with a ping, it turns into a wave. Got that?

Giving IE8 a try…

It tends to stop responding quite often on one machine (win7rtm) ...

And has tabs that are stuck connecting forever on another machine (vistasp2)... and now I'm wondering why am I giving IE8 a try?

Conan interviews the real Ajay Bhatt

via engadget

Schtasks

Schedules commands and programs to run periodically or at a specific time. Adds and removes tasks from the schedule, starts and stops tasks on demand, and displays and changes scheduled tasks.

via microsoft

I've known about the at command to schedule tasks in windows, and it turns out that schtasks is a more detailed command.

For instance to schedule a task to run every five minutes:

schtasks /create /tn "task name goes here" /tr executable_goes_here.exe /sc minute /mo 5