Changing Way

I have this laptop: a Dell Inspiron 2200. It has no power. By that, I don’t mean that its processor struggles with the tasks I give it.

I mean that it has no electricity. It no longer works off the mains, probably because of the damage done to its power cord. Its battery has run down to the point that, when I try to boot it, it goes right into hibernate mode.

There are some files on the hard drive that I… need is probably too strong a word, that I’m reluctant to abandon. So, what to do? Let’s review.

1. The best possible fate for an old internal drive is to become a super-handy external drive, advised Alpha Geek Rick at Lifehacker. His post, and the comments on it, make it sound easy and inexpensive.
2. Buy a new power cord. The advantage is that it would give me back the laptop. But I’m not sure I want a slow, heavy, Windows laptop with a broken DVD/CD drive. And this would be more expensive than (1).
3. As (2), but install Linux after getting the files off. The laptop would still be heavy, and the DVD drive still broken, but it wouldn’t be Windows and it wouldn’t be as slow.
4. Borrow a power cord or battery for long enough to get the files off. I’ve already tried this at work, but they don’t have stuff that old.
5. Forget about it unless and until I really need some of the files. But my home, office, and life are quite cluttered enough without a dormant laptop lying around.

I’m leaning toward (1). I note that Rick recommends NewEgg as a source for the enclosure I’d need. I also note that Rick’s post carries contextual ads, that the first of them points to a handy-looking page at xPCgear, but that recent PriceGrabber ratings of xPCgear tend to include words like worst, suck, and avoid.

I’d be grateful for any advice or other thoughts. I’d be impressed if you recognized the post title’s reference to the Kelly Link story “Some Zombie Contingency Plans,” which is available in the excellent Magic for Beginners collection.

Clay Bennett illustrates the relationship between security and privacy.

Bruce Schneier contends that we are being presented with a false dichotomy, and that it: isn’t security versus privacy. It’s liberty versus control.

I just tried the 2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz, despite being a victim of taxation without representation here in the USA. I didn’t know much about my match, so I Googled him, only to find that ABC has just cut Mike Gravel from a Dem debate because he doesn’t meet the station’s “quite inclusive” criteria. Kucinich was also cut. Sorry if I somehow jinxed you, guys.

79% Mike Gravel
78% Dennis Kucinich
73% Chris Dodd
68% Barack Obama
66% John Edwards
66% Hillary Clinton
65% Joe Biden
64% Bill Richardson
44% Rudy Giuliani
38% John McCain
37% Ron Paul
30% Mike Huckabee
27% Mitt Romney
17% Tom Tancredo
14% Fred Thompson

That’s the comment I had to make when I saw an article about the British government’s intention to ban samurai swords. I saw the article thanks to reddit, and am able to use the photo thanks to mpmbm.

I’m not the only person who can’t stand the silly mis-use of momentarily. It means for a moment, not in a moment.

I intend to stop ranting and get back to work soon. If I get back to work momentarily, another post will follow very soon after this one.

This outburst was prompted by a message in another window: “This system is momentarily unavailable.” That’s not true. The system in question has been unavailable for more than 30 minutes; that’s a lot of moments.

There’s a fascinating interview with security guru Bruce Schneier at Freakonomics/NYT. It’s full of comments like this.

I write my passwords down. There’s this rampant myth that you shouldn’t write your passwords down. My advice is exactly the opposite. We already know how to secure small bits of paper. Write your passwords down on a small bit of paper, and put it with all of your other valuable small bits of paper: in your wallet.

Dubner asks pretty good questions, too. This is my favorite, despite its length.

You have repeatedly maintained that most of the investments that the government has made towards counter-terrorism are largely “security theater,” and that the real way to combat terrorism is to invest in intelligence. However, Tim Weiner’s book, Legacy of Ashes, says that the U.S. government is particularly inept at gathering and processing intelligence. Does that leave us with no hope at all?

I’ll leave it to you to read the response, to read why Bruce Schneier keeps his home wireless network open, and so on.

I like a lot of things about being a prof. Grading is not one of them.

OK, back to the stack…

I don’t think that the message in the title is meant to be satirical. Apparently “top intelligence official” Donald Kerr is serious. Maybe intelligence doesn’t mean what it used to either.

I saw this story at Yahoo News via Reddit. Pamela Hess of AP joins other journalists impressive for their deadpan delivery and chances of making it as a satirist.

“I’m convinced that the Christian faith is becoming more like Wikipedia and less like Encyclopedia Britannica.” So wrote Henry G. Brinton, a pastor, in a USA Today column entitled Do-it-yourself Christianity.

I don’t usually read USA Today, and I don’t usually read about religion, but this column caught and kept my attention.

I woke up this morning, though my daylight saving time had passed. That’s the blue’s I’m singing today. The reasons I thought that the clocks should have fallen back overnight are that one of them had done automatically, and that two calendars told me that DST had ended.

So I changed the other clocks, and adjusted our day accordingly. My daughter and I went to the zoo this morning, and I was surprised how many people were there so soon after the opening time of 10am. Then it seemed that the Patriots game had started early.

Then I checked, and found that DST ends next weekend, not this. The Wikipedia article on DST reveals that the boundary between DST and not-DST in the USA has moved this year, from late October to early November.