I have used chroots several times to install new systems alongside running systems before, finishing by rebooting into the new partition. For the first time, however, I find myself wanting to reintall over a running system, and changing arch'es, too. This sounds impossible to my ears, so I'm calling on some help from my friends here. Any ideas on how to make this work?

From a college-level textbook in the introductory course "Life Skills:"

1. Dogs and cats can be said not to be able to think because when we tell them to go to the refrigerator to get us something to eat, they don't understand and don't comply.
2. Computers can be said to think because computers can defeat humans in chess, but the computer doesn't really understand what it is doing.
3. Therefore, it can be said that only humans and angels can think.

Let's test your understanding using a quiz from the book. Which of the following is true?

1. A dog thinks when it puts shoes in the trash because the shoes stink.
2. A boy doesn't want to go to school because he doesn't understand the teacher.
3. A human defeats a computer in calculations.
4. A fish comes to the surface of the water when it is called.

The answers? 2 and 3. 1 and 4 are false because animals don't think.

This isn't some dinky seminary, folks: it's the state open university. Wow. Just ... wow. You've got to love state religion.

Three more sets of 15 since the last post. What is up?

I keep getting moderator points. I'll get ten or fifteen, then another set a day or so after the expiration date of the first set. This has been going on for over a week. I think I'm on my fourth set of mod points in a row (though I obviously didn't start counting immediately).

That, and the random redundant mods on my old posts continue.

A couple of days ago, I saw on a Banshee developer blog that an Amazon music store plug-in was intentionally broken by the Amazon Store. Does anyone know what this is about? There were no details in the blog and it wouldn't accept comments so I couldn't ask.

I used to come to Slashdot looking for insightful comments on tech stories. I was waiting for Chrome OS to show up on the front page so that I could get some insight (there's not enough information about the OS to get anything really informative). I got nothing but trash. Anything that was insightful got modded "Troll." Half-thought-out posts with no information got modded "Insightful" and "Informative."

What a piece of shit this place has become. I have to hold my nose to read it. Why do I bother?

I've given my notice at work and will be leaving Korea at the end of August. Five years here is more than enough. I'll be heading back to Thailand to work and get my M.Ed. I'm weighing the options for my education right now. I may enter a satellite program from a U.S. school, or I may hire a Thai tutor and just get my teacher certification from a Thai university. Then there's the easier but less-attractive third option of enrolling in an international (i.e. English) program through a Thai university.

I'll make the decision in a week or two after looking everything over.

About eight years ago, I was using a piece of software to replicate disks. It was not GPL, but it was free to use and designed for clusters. You either booted a floppy or did netboot and loaded scripts off of a server to image the system. It supported multicast, which was huge for me at that time. I can't remember the name (though I seem to recall a "B" -- hahaha) and Googling such generic terms gives me nothing but newer results.

Ring any bells?

Oh, and I figured out those jacks! They were three-pronged power plugs.

I got my hands on some pictures of a prototype keyboard computer, but there are two jacks on the back that I just don't get. On is labelled "TV" and has three holes in a triangle. There's also an s-video jack, so that's not it. The other jack is labelled "DE-RN" and I have no idea. Googling for it didn't bring up anything relevant at all.

HELP!!!!1111!!! ;)

Well, my friend wanted me to change her operating system. My other friend got his new Mac and has been raving about it non-stop to her, and "they" decided she'd had enough of Windows, (despite neither of them being tech-smart in any real way). Since I didn't know anything about her hardware, I went to her place equipped with four options:

1. A hackintosh disk. She's flying back to Canada and buying a new computer in a couple of months, and based on what my other friend has said, she's leaning toward a Mac. I though that giving her a couple of months to try out the OS would be cool, even if it's completely pirated. (My reasoning? She'd probably get used to it and give Apple the sale so that they made money off the deal.)
2. A hastily-burned version of the Ubuntu 9.04RC which I didn't have time to md5sum. I figured that she was more likely to find info about Ubuntu on-line and among friends than any other Linux variant. Since the thing is due out in a couple of weeks and I'm running it on one machine now with few problems, I figured there wouldn't be any issues.
3. An Ubuntu 8.10 DVD I got out of a Linux Format magazine when I visited Thailand. It didn't have Asian language support built in, but she didn't want that anyway.
4. An OEM Windows CD in case she changed her mind or something.

Backing up was a nightmare. I guess there must be tools for it, but finding all the places here documents, music, and photos were was tedious. It was made simpler when she told me that she only wanted to save a couple of document folders and that everything else could go. I still backed up as much of the stuff as I had space for on a couple of flash drives, then I double checked by asking to make sure that I had backed up exactly what she wanted.

OS X installed but didn't boot once installed, and since I don't know anything about it, I just went to option #2. The disk was corrupted (of course) and wouldn't boot. 8.10 installed, but I was so worried about the stupid PulseAudio problem for her that I immediately upgraded to 9.04 (she got download speeds of 4000+KB/sec from the local mirror ... wow). She watches American TV via emule normally, so I installed Miro and taught her how to set up with TVRSS. Then I went to dinner and asked her to play around for a little while so that she would have some questions for me to answer when I got back.

The first question when I got through the door was "Where are my photos?"

"Well I saved as much as I had space for, and they're in the Photos directory. You can use the photo manager application to work with them." I'd already imported them.

"Not those. I had about 2000 photos of all my vacations."

There was a blank stare from me and a sinking feeling in my stomach as I meekly muttered "You didn't ask me to save any photos ...."

She swore that she did, but that didn't matter. She got past it quickly and I think she truly forgave me. There were two points that I could have used to avoid all her pain, though:

1. When I was staring at Picasa, I thought "I could back everything up online for her. Nah. She said it wasn't important."
2. I could have gone with Ubuntu first and set up dual boot. If I'd done that, all the data would have still been there.

I'm an idiot for thinking both times ... "Nah, she said it was OK." Never trust the user.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/04/15/apples_share_of_u_s_pc_market_slips_to_7_4_as_sales_decline.html

Although Apple's U.S. market share is ~7.5% and holding, it is buried in the "Other" category world wide, somewhere below Toshiba's 5.5%.

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/UB9X4tdiMrLy_BAKxmik-w?authkey=Gv1sRgCNyVjfrFgdu7vQE&feat=directlink

Krod Mandoon puts the ___ Movie genre to shame.

Oh, and the new homepage design for Slashdot lost me and it took two minutes to figure out how to get to the journal.

I've been in Korea for just shy of five years now. Most days, I deal with it, but there are quite a few things that make me want to twist someone's head off. There are good things, too. I love teaching children, and the country gives me the opportunity to do that. They pay me well enough for what I do, and considering my housing is paid for, I end up with half my money in the bank at the end of the year. Since the won crashed, this nest egg hasn't been worth so much, but ....

I walk or bike to work, as I have for most of my life. I don't own a car, hoping that my carbon emissions are better than most people's. If I've got to travel, I take a train, bus, or taxi, with my preferences in that order. Taxis are cheap here and the city bus is regular and less than a U.S. dollar.

Korean society is homogeneous. Being a citizen of Korea is synonymous with being of Korean ancestry. With the new "problem" of farmers now importing Vietnamese, Chinese, and Filipino wives just so they've got someone to marry (shortage of women born due to aborting female fetuses, you see), the homogeneity may change in a generation or two. Right now, though, being non-Korean means being an outsider. Being obviously non-Korean -- I'm caucasion -- I don't make it into anyone's circle of friends.

And that's a big problem because Korea is all about circles. If you aren't a friend, family, or co-worker, Koreans don't give a shit about you. Normally nice people will drive full-speed right through a crosswalk full of children in a school zone and expect the children (outside their circles) to get out of the way or die, I guess. The same drivers will stop for someone they have a relationship with.

Since I'm an outsider and I walk or bike, that puts me in a dangerous position every day. I go beyond defensive walking into paranoia. Normally a sweet guy, the danger I'm in makes me upset and defensive, and I end up screaming at drivers or even kicking cars when they barely miss me in the crosswalk.

Then there's the racial problem. Goy is of Chinese decent, and she looks Korean to most Koreans (though westerners continue to tell me that she looks Thai ... sigh). She is classed as a traitor to her race .. not by everyone, but by a large enough percentage to make shit uncomfortable -- cursing is common; spitting less so. The blood purity thing really gets to me, and we are innocent victims of its wrath. It's VERY thinly veiled racism.

There's also a war mentality caused by a forty-year-old cease fire, which exposes itself in two ways. Firstly, the older generation doesn't wait for anyone, throwing elbows or shoulders and brazenly cutting in line. Older drivers don't wait for anyone, either, turning right out of the far left lane or left out of the far right. Secondly, there's a legacy of military-style management. Information is power. Nothing is disclosed until the last possible moment, and everyone jumps on whatever seems most urgent at the time. This is what I learned in school as crisis management. If you look at the link with a list of sixteen of mis-management factors, you'll get a good overview of Korean management style at the places I've worked. It drives me nuts and destroys my job motivation.

Then there's stupid shit like requiring a Korean national ID number to do anything -- purchasing online or posting in web forums. I have a number just like theirs, but my alien ID number doesn't go into the database and I'm cut out. By the way, the online registration requirement was due to an actress killing herself after being slandered (libeled?) online. Instead of using the tragedy as a teaching point that people's words are not a good reason for committing suicide, the government effectively taught people that it IS a good reason, and that you need protection from the government in the form of netiquette police and a three strikes law.

Finally, there's the nationalism. Being an American, I may not be in a position to criticize, but the constant misinformation and outright censorship in order to boost or keep the national image really bugs me. That would be true if I saw it in the U.S., too.

That's my rant.

I'm gong on two weeks' vacation to Thailand tomorrow. Expect my account to be very quiet while I lie on the beach, spend nights with Goy, and eat spicy seafood.