Category Archives: Technology and Society

Administrative, Technology and Society

Is There A Fedora Doctor In The House?

2 Comments

I’ve been having hardware issues with my Fedora 20 installation (yes, I know it’s still beta until tomorrow). I had it on a new WD 2T drive, but occasionally I was having boot problems, and having to repair the filesystem. I noticed that it was making strange noises and running hot, and taking a long time to even get to GRUB, indicating that it was hanging up the BIOS itself. I was on the verge of returning it, when I tried moving it from the first to the second SATA interface on the MB (I have six). The problems went away, so apparently it’s a motherboard problem on that interface (at least that’s what I’m inferring). Unfortunately, it refuses to boot now, dropping into emergency mode, and telling me that it can’t switch root, because /sysroot/etc/os-release is missing (which it does seem to be). I tried copying /etc/os-release to /sysroot/etc/os-release, but it wouldn’t let me (and etc doesn’t seem to currently exist on /sysroot).

Any ideas how to fix this?

[Update a while later]

[Update a few minutes later]

Apparently Anaconda can’t be bothered to load logical volumes before looking for linux partitions. But why?

And what do I do about it? When I do a ‘vgchange -ay’ it loads them, but if I then run anaconda, it still doesn’t work, and when I go back to shell, they’re no longer mounted. I can’t believe I’m the only person having this problem, but I’ve done searches and can’t find any useful information about it.

[Late afternoon update]

Someone on twitter asked me to post the contents of grub.cfg, so here it is, after the fold:
Continue reading Is There A Fedora Doctor In The House? →

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

How Corrupt Is The Environmental Movement?

1 Comment

Pretty thoroughly:

Of course cronyism is “unusually safe.” If you have to actually compete by producing energy at the lowest price, all kinds of things can go wrong. But if you can get in with the government, so that legislation requires everyone to pay extra for your product whether they want to or not, your investment is “unusually safe.” This is what cronyism–a polite word for corruption–is all about. It is the principal purpose of the modern environmental movement.

So dhey’re doing very well by doing “good.”

Which is both ironic and hypocritical, as Mark Morano pointed out on CNN the other night, given that they’re always accusing skeptics of taking money from the fossil industry.

Business, Economics, Popular Culture, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Smartphone Subsidies

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The downside.

I’m currently month-to-month on my three-year-old two-year Verizon contract with a Droid Global 2. I think that if I upgrade, I’ll just buy it outright, but right now, I don’t see anything on the new phones that I can’t live without. Of course, I only use my phone when I’m traveling, or out of the house, so since I usually work at home, it’s no biggie.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Another Kick To Malthus

22 Comments

Huge amounts of freshwater reserves have been found, under the ocean:

Water scarcity has been a favorite topic for the Chicken Littles of the world. Just 18 years ago the vice president of the World Bank was ominously warning that “the wars of the next century will be fought over water.” It’s easy to drum up fears of “water wars” some undetermined time in the future, but studies like this one, and discoveries of new water sources like this one in Kenya, or this one under the Sahara, suggest that these fears that have gripped Malthusians — and that Malthusians have in turn used to push through otherwise unworkable policy recommendations — are a lot less serious.

One less excuse for socialism.

Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

The Ethics Of Mars One

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Many issues remain:

Since the 1960s – and following the Nuremberg trials – it has been standard practice for researchers to follow certain ethical standards in the treatment of human subjects. These rules include the requirement to submit research proposals to an ethics committee for prior approval, clearly explain clearly the risks of any procedures to potential research subjects, before obtaining their informed consent. Since Mars One now admits to planning research on the colonists themselves, the mission becomes bound to these same standards.

Mars One may not meet these conditions. As far as we know, no ethics committee has considered the Mars One plan or the risks it poses to the colonists. These risks will need to be communicated clearly before volunteers are recruited to take part in the mission.

I’ve previously expressed my own concerns, but I don’t agree that having it done by government space agencies instead is the solution, or that a disaster will inhibit human migration into space.