The buzzword these days is energy. Especially gasoline costs. While President Bush rightly calls for responsible drilling of oil in the coastal waters and to explore oil shale development as well as opening up the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge, the Democrats, as usual, are rounding up the wagons and screaming environmentalism at the top of their pitiful, soiled lungs.
Since I live in California, home of the radical Environmentalists who have run this state unchecked for eons, I decided I had a shot at convincing Hollywood star and the Terminator, ArnoldSchwarzenegger himself to at least consider the idea.
So I wrote a letter and got the following response. I'll print the entire exchange including my reply for those who care to read it. The arrogance of the staff that wrote this letter is beyond words.
No matter how well-meaning, politicians frequently fail to understand all the consequences of their laws. Real world costs, the costs and benefits faced by those who will actually have to live with the regulations, often elude those who pass these rules. Yet, even by those depressing standards, problems with the mandated that people will soon be forced to use stand out.
The advantages of compact fluorescent light bulbs are obvious. While the fluorescent bulbs can cost 10 times more than incandescent ones, fluorescent bulbs use 75 percent less electricity and last up to 10 times longer.
But longer life and energy savings come with a caveat — the fluorescent bulbs must be used for at least 15 minutes once they are turned on and ideally for at least several hours at a time. Turning them off quickly after you have turned them on dramatically reduces their life expectancy. Not being able to use light bulbs simply when it is convenient is a cost the consumers will bear even if politicians didn’t factor it into their estimates of savings.
My trusty VMWare server gave up the ghost when I upgraded Ubuntu to Hardy Heron. After reviewing a number of recipes that all were missing pieces of the real process, I took my own stab at documenting what worked for me after about an hour of beating the walls of Google for the best solutions. Here is my attempt at helping you to get VMWare running on your system once you begin your attempt to fix the problem.
Don't panic if you have an established VMWare server that got killed in the process of your Ubuntu upgrade. Things can be fixed easily to have your server running in no time. Remember, the Ubuntu community is vast and all-knowing. Help can be had at many quarters and if one recipe doesn't work, then keep looking for more articles and writeups. You will find the solution by being diligent and patient.
On to the fix!
First, try downloading the latest VMWare server from VMWare's site and see if they have fixed this yet. If your install blows up, then the next steps need to be taken:
cd to lib/modules/source under the vmware-server-distrib where you extracted the original vmware source code.
tar -xvf vmmon.tar (This will create the vmmon-only directory).
cd vmmon-only/include.
Edit the vcpuset.h file in this directory, you need to change line 74 from # asm/bitops.h” to “# linux/bitops.h. (Yes - keep the "#" character just "as-is". Just change the "asm" to "linux" and all will be well.
cd ../..
remove the old vmmon.tar or rename it if you want to keep it.
tar -cvf vmmon.tar vmmon-only (This creates the replacement tar image with the file you just updated).
Re-compile the modules by re-running the standard "sudo vmware-install.pl"
Know that this probably will fail, but we are going through the needed steps to get through the entire process. This is how things work on a starship ;>). No worries. There is more to the process. If yours does work at this point, then more power to you, else... read on!
Steers like a car, tilts like a motorcycle – and gets 100 miles per gallon of gas.
California lawmakers are wrestling with whether to allow into carpool lanes a high speed, fully enclosed, three-wheel hybrid that is under development in Los Angeles.
The legislation is pushed by the hybrid's creator, Venture Vehicles, which acknowledges that sidestepping bumper-to-bumper commutes could make it easier to obtain financing and to sell the vehicle.
VentureOne, patterned after a model sold in Europe, the Carver, is designed to feature a tiny body, a $25,000 price and many of the safety and comfort features of a car.
"I've ridden one of them," said Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes, who drove the European Carver on a test track. "They're very nifty. You can't drive them without smiling."
"It's a different sensation," said Fuentes, D-Sylmar. "When you turn, it leans, no matter what you do. It feels like a very narrow car, but you feel very safe."
Like a motorcycle, the VentureOne is meant to seat only one person in front and one in back. But like a car, it promises a steering wheel, automatic transmission and air conditioning.
The three-wheeler is expected to hit speeds of more than 100 mph, tilt up to 45 degrees, and come equipped with an airbag, rear bumper and side impact beams.
With less than a week remaining until the start of the STS-124 launch countdown, space shuttle Discovery is in place at NASA Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39A. Final preparations are on schedule for liftoff May 31 at 5:02 p.m. EDT. The countdown begins May 28 at 3 p.m., counting from the T-43 hour mark.
"Preparations are going really well," Shuttle Launch Director Mike Leinbach said at a May 19 news conference. He pointed out that Discovery's remarkably smooth processing flow will allow shuttle work crews to take off the Memorial Day holiday. "Right now we're in great shape, and we really expect to have a good three or four days off this weekend and come back and launch."
A shuttle mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope is now set for Oct. 8, giving NASA one final chance to fix the 18-year-old telescope before it is retired.
The space shuttle Atlantis and its crew were supposed to fly to Hubble on Aug. 28, but that mission was delayed because extra time was needed to build extra shuttle fuel tanks in case another shuttle needed to be launched as part of a rescue mission.
A soft touchdown in Mars' northern arctic plains set for Sunday is just the first step for NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander. If the dust clears, solar-power arrays deploy and all equipment checks out, Phoenix will then have some digging to do.
While its rover cousins continue to investigate the surface of the red planet (as they have since early 2004), the $462 million dollar Phoenix mission aims to see what's underneath the soil. "Our voyage is down; we dig," said Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona.
At its landing site in the Vastitas Borealis near Mars' north pole, Phoenix is designed to scoop up samples of Martian soil, as well as the layers of rock-hard ice beneath, in the hopes of shedding light on when and how the ice formed and whether it has ever melted and moistened the surrounding soils. This information could shed light on whether this little-studied area of the planet could ever have been habitable for life, though Phoenix's mission isn't to find life itself.
"We're literally scratching the surface, and it's a stepping stone," Smith said. "If we see something that's unexpected and absolutely fascinating and interesting, I would expect NASA would want other missions, that it would go take the next step in the polar regions."
Getting the Linux version of Flash Player to work with Hardy Heron (and presumably other Debian versions?) has been something of a chore for me. I was perplexed as to why I could not seem to get the installation procedure that the good folks at Adobe had created to run with my various flash videos and finally figured out a fix. As always, my goal is to share such fixes with the wider audience and I hope my recipe finds use in your installation!
The Recipe
Close your Firefox browsers - all of them running. Nary a one operating.
Unpack in your /home/*your username here* directory.
cd into the install_flash_player_9_linux directory.
Install w/o sudo or use sudo as preferred. See the nice blog at benjaminlim.net on the various ways to do this depending on your choice of sudo or not. In my case, I ran without the sudo and things went just fine. If you do the sudo install, note the you'll need to select the install directory as being /usr/lib/firefox-3.0b5. For whatever reason, the installer dislikes /usr/lib/firefox as the install pathname.
Now for the secret sauce. My particular install had gnash installed. As such, no matter how I tried to convince Firefox to use Adobe Flash, Gnash was played irregardless of my choices. So, use the package manager to remove gnash. You can always install it again later if you feel the need, but it may defeat your use of Adobe Flash player. Note: gnash is truly a horrid player. It just does not run correctly with many Flash applets - Just my opinion.
Start Firefox.
Edit Preferences.
Choose the Applications tab at the top of the Preferences window.
In "Search", type "swf".
The content type "SWF file" should display - click the "Action" dropdown and select "Use Shockwave Flash".
Close the Preferences window.
Restart Firefox.
Hit a site with flash running on it and then right-click inside the running applet to see that you are running the Adobe player.
In light of recent events in the world, I've been slowly assembling the beginnings of a revolution at my household. A house as dedicated to solar energy as possible, and on a shoestring. As a Republican, I get strange looks when I talk about going green and even more so when I speak of frugality and re-using with conservation in mind.
Of course, the strange looks I get are even funnier to watch when I explain how many $$$ I'll save doing things this way. People pay attention when they see a way to escape with dollars in pocket while keeping warm or cool as the need changes.
Being single, the expenses of investing in these technologies is a reality. As such, my plan to go solar has evolved into the following broad initiative:
Solar Electricity to take on bulk of home power.
Solar Water heating to take on bulk of the water heating for 3 of 4 seasons.
Solar outdoor lighting to remove costs of lighting paths (and perhaps holiday decorations?).
Solar Home Heating using ground exchange loops.
Solar Cooling using ground exchange loops.
Solar Cooking using reflected heat cookers.
By attacking the most egregious items first, namely the heating and cooling of the home, one can reduce energy costs many fold with relatively little outlay. The worst expenses are investing in the digging equipment to dig the trench to form the basis of a ground loop exchange setup and the corresponding investment in piping and components to bring the system to working order. Some call this "Geothermal Exchange" and it is a means of either bring cool air in that has been cooled from having blown through underground pipes or to bring earth warmed air in during the winter when the outside temperature is often ten to twenty degrees cooler. Either way, such technological capabilities are not beyond the average home handyman.
Friday, May 16 2008 @ 12:48 AM PDT
Contributed by: tomcat
Views: 38
I finally took the plunge and installed Hardy Heron on my Ubuntu system. Having waited the couple of weeks for any critical patches to appear, my read was that Hardy was indeed a stable release and I went for it.
A number of packages vanished in the process, including my prized xmms, so do be ready with a list of packages to install if you find them missing. I'm not quite sure where to grab a list of the installed packages, but it should be easy enough to find for future reference.
The upgrade for Hardy could not have been smoother. Ubuntu, as usual, did the quality job they always do and the process was rife only with a few surprises, easily fixed. For the perfectionists who choose to complain, you really have nothing to b****h about, but that is personality which often does not mirror reality.
For the xmms fix, visit Sartek's blog with a very nice instruction set that does the job beautifully. I was back with xmms in 5 minutes after a quick compile and install. Seamless, quick and well written. Hats off to Sartek! XMMS is a nice player that doesn't deserve to be kicked out in the cold just yet!
My Gateway laptop has always been a bit crusty when it comes to wireless support for the built in broadcom wireless card and this upgrade was no different from the rest. So, I connected up to my trusty ethernet port and searched Google for a solution. Up came the Penkin wordpress article with great information on how to easily update your broadcom driver, since the download version from the official sources does not seem to work for beans on my setup.
However, on following the instructions, things didn't quite work until I ran a few changes to the script... Read on for the fix I used.
Do you use the FireFox browser? Have you downloaded and used the "Greasemonkey" plugin that is free for FireFox?
If so, you too can use our custom Liberal translator so that you, as the knowledgeable and fair minded conservative you are, can enjoy the meaning behind even the most tiresome leftist tirade and tomes...
CLICK HERE to install the plugin after are certain you have FireFox and Greasemonkey installed!
The buzzword these days is energy. Especially gasoline costs. While President Bush rightly calls for responsible drilling of oil in the coastal waters and to explore oil shale development as well as opening up the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge, the Democrats, as usual, are rounding up the wagons and screaming environmentalism at the top of their pitiful, soiled lungs.
No matter how well-meaning, politicians frequently fail to understand all the consequences of their laws. Real world costs, the costs and benefits faced by those who will actually have to live with the regulations, often elude those who pass these rules. Yet, even by those depressing standards, problems with the mandated that people will soon be forced to use stand out.
My trusty VMWare server gave up the ghost when I upgraded Ubuntu to Hardy Heron. After reviewing a number of recipes that all were missing pieces of the real process, I took my own stab at documenting what worked for me after about an hour of beating the walls of Google for the best solutions. Here is my attempt at helping you to get VMWare running on your system once you begin your attempt to fix the problem.
With less than a week remaining until the start of the STS-124 launch countdown, space shuttle Discovery is in place at NASA Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39A. Final preparations are on schedule for liftoff May 31 at 5:02 p.m. EDT. The countdown begins May 28 at 3 p.m., counting from the 
A shuttle mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope is now set for Oct. 8, giving NASA one final chance to fix the 18-year-old telescope before it is retired.
A soft touchdown in Mars' northern arctic plains set for Sunday is just the first step for NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander. If the dust clears, solar-power arrays deploy and all equipment checks out, Phoenix will then have some digging to do.
Getting the Linux version of Flash Player to work with Hardy Heron (and presumably other Debian versions?) has been something of a chore for me. I was perplexed as to why I could not seem to get the installation procedure that the good folks at Adobe had created to run with my various flash videos and finally figured out a fix. As always, my goal is to share such fixes with the wider audience and I hope my recipe finds use in your installation!
In light of recent events in the world, I've been slowly assembling the beginnings of a revolution at my household. A house as dedicated to solar energy as possible, and on a shoestring. As a Republican, I get strange looks when I talk about going green and even more so when I speak of frugality and re-using with conservation in mind.
I finally took the plunge and installed Hardy Heron on my Ubuntu system. Having waited the couple of weeks for any critical patches to appear, my read was that Hardy was indeed a stable release and I went for it. 
